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Make The Case - Server Efficiency

Photos: Big Blue shows its green side Camera icon

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 29 May 2007 17:29 BST

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Look inside the data processing room at IBM South Bank and two things become apparent. Firstly, it is very, very cold. Really cold — even for a data centre. The coolness is due to the use of IBM's own patented Stored Cooling Solution ("the ice-cube for your data centre"), which IBM claims will improve chiller efficiency by up to 50 percent.

Secondly, as shown in the photograph above, the blades in the IBM blade servers are stacked in a very dense configuration. Density equals heat but, rather than spread the heat to dissipate it, the IBM centre works by concentrating the problem so it can deal with it more effectively.

On one full-length rack (shown above) there are around 240 blades at a supercomputer level of density. Yet the room is very cold.
Meanwhile, the excess heat has been channelled out of the back of the servers to warm what parts of the surrounding environment may need warming.

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