HP last week released power management and cooling systems to reduce datacentre energy bills that have been bloated by increased energy consumption and rising tariffs.
Like systems from rivals such as IBM, HP’s Modular Cooling System (MCS) relies on the old solution of chilled water as a central part of its strategy to prevent overheating in datacentres. HP is also seeking to standardise server and storage infrastructure through the new 10000 G2 Series Rack that replaces the seven previous formats it offered.
Also new is the Power Distribution Unit Management Module that complements the MCS by monitoring power environments and reporting about them over SNMP links via HP’s Insight Manager software.
The firm said that the MCS supports up to 30 kilowatts in a single rack and that it had saved about 25 percent of power by deploying the equipment in its own datacentre.
“It’s about managing physics both in terms of the technology and the datacentre,” said Paul Miller, HP vice-president for industry-standard servers. “Component vendors will optimise so they’re all running hotter; and changing or building out the datacentre is very expensive.” HP is also offering services to help companies plan and alter datacentres.
Other firms are looking to use refrigerant technologies. Trox AITCS is using carbon dioxide to cool blade servers in cabinets of up to 30 kilowatts, and Imperial College in London is an early customer.
However, some experts believe that good datacentre design is lacking. Paul Elliott, managing director of datacentre maintenance firm Future Tech, said, “You have to look at housekeeping, mechanical, electrical factors; and responsibility for decision making has to be with IT.”
