Data centre cooling shouldn't cost the earth

Iceotope Technologies, in conjunction with multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy, Cundall, has published a new Engineering Report: Liquid and Air-Cooling Compared, which describes and compares different forms of liquid-cooling as well as other forms of liquid-to-air cooling. It also assesses their suitability to augment or replace air-cooled infrastructure in real-world data centre situations.

Developing the report, Cundall assessed the performance and energy efficiency of liquid cooling approaches based upon the sorts of scenarios data centre operators may face in four hypothetical data centres. The report incorporates calculated PUE and WUE figures, as well as projected OPEX savings and environmental benefits in order to present a comparison between liquid-cooling and air-cooled approaches in different data centre contexts.

Malcolm Howe, Partner at Cundall said: “Iceotope commissioned Cundall to undertake an independent study on liquid cooling, requesting a detailed analysis as well the impact on data centre operating costs. Our results show the performance and energy efficiency which liquid cooling offers over conventional air-cooling, as service providers simultaneously rise to the challenge of meeting demand for more data centre capacity whilst proactively minimising facility carbon footprint.”

David Craig, CEO at Iceotope Technologies said; “Today’s IT managers need to deploy increasingly common and powerful CPUs and GPUs as a platform to enable a range of applications which include AI and ML capability. The challenge is to be able to effectively cool this type of equipment at scale in data centre and edge computing environments. Demonstrably, air cooling is already beyond its limits for these kinds of high-power density applications and equipment. Precision liquid cooling offers a pragmatic solution for meeting the industry needs for reliability, sustainability and lower OPEX – as this report proves.”

Attend a panel discussion on 16th June, get a copy of the management report

To launch the report, Iceotope Technologies and Cundall are being joined by Kao Data in a 60-minute webinar organised to discuss the results and to allow delegates to have their questions answered. “Data centres that don’t cost the earth” will take place at 2.00pm (BST) on 16th June 2021, those signing up and attending the event will receive a management

report containing a full overview of Cundall’s findings.