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HP Announces 'Smart' Cooling Solution for Data Centers

Hewlett-Packard has announced a "smart" cooling solution for the design of data centers that could dramatically reduce energy use and save enterprise users millions of dollars annually. Read More

Hewlett-Packard has announced a “smart” cooling solution for the design of data centers that could dramatically reduce energy use and save enterprise users millions of dollars annually.

The new system uses computational fluid dynamics — like that used to improve airplane design — to create a 3D model of temperature distribution throughout a data center. It then recommends strategic placement of computing resources and air conditioning equipment to optimize energy use for cooling.

“Increasingly powerful microprocessors and systems are leading to higher heat densities in data centers,” said Juergen Rottler, vice president, marketing, strategy and alliances, HP Services. “By making energy-efficient cooling a part of the overall data center planning process, we believe we can improve space utilization, control real estate expense, assure business continuity and cut the cost of cooling in major data centers by as much as 25%.”

HP Services will offer interested customers an analysis of their data centers to determine whether the HP smart cooling solution could benefit them. After collecting data about floor space, computational requirements and planned or existing cooling systems, the analysis is performed by specially trained experts, using methodology developed by HP Labs.

The service cost could be offset by energy savings. For example, a future 30,000-square-foot data center with 1,000 racks might require 10 megawatts to power the computing infrastructure and half that amount — 5 megawatts — to dissipate and remove the heat. At $100 per megawatt hour, the cooling alone could cost up to $4 million per year. HP researchers believe a smart cooling analysis could reduce cooling expenses at a data center of this size by 25% — $1 million annually.

In addition to static smart cooling, HP Labs is working on dynamic smart cooling for future data centers.

“Dynamic smart cooling will direct cooling resources within the data center precisely where and when needed as computing requirements rise and fall during operation,” said Chandrakant Patel, principal scientist, HP Labs, who heads up the research. “Dynamic smart cooling also will redistribute the computer workload within data centers or within a global network of data centers to achieve cooling energy efficiency.”

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