[Beowulf] 'liquid cooled' racks

[Eric Shook]

Hi Bruce,

Our University is also looking into these racks.  We have also looked at 
other vendors with similar liquid cooling and something called 
"Spraycool" technology (limited in deployment) among others.  I would 
also be interested in the information you collect on or off the list and 
would be willing to share some information.

Thanks,
Eric

-- 
Eric Shook (319) 335-6714
Technical Lead, Systems and Operations - GROW
http://grow.uiowa.edu


Bruce Allen wrote:
> Dear Beowulf list,
> 
> For my next cluster room, I am hoping to use 'liquid cooled' racks make 
> by Knurr (CoolTherm, http://www.thermalmanagement.de/).  The scale is 67 
> racks x 7.5kW heat removal per rack (36 U usable per rack).
> 
> Does anyone on the list have experiences with these or similar racks 
> (you can reply to me privately if you don't want to share your 
> experiences publicly)?  I am told that there are lots of installations 
> in Europe, especially in Germany, but that the only US sites are at Penn 
> State, somewhere in the Chicago area, and U. of Vermont, and that these 
> US installations are fairly small-scale.
> 
> The racks have front and back doors that close, and contains fans in the 
> back which circulate air through a heat exchanger located in the bottom 
> of the rack.  The heat exchanger transfers the heat into chilled water.
> 
> The advantages of this are that it is quiet, and that you don't need 
> vertical height for underfloor ducting or overhead hot air removal. 
> Disadvantages are cost, potential difficulty of working within the rack. 
> and loss of one rack of cooling capacity if you open both the front and 
> back doors.
> 
> (In this case I have access to 'building' funds that can not be used to 
> buy more cpus, so the cost issue is not important.)
> 
> I would be very interested to hear about people's experiences with these 
> racks (or similar ones from another manufacturer) in an HPC environment.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Bruce
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