[Beowulf] More about those underwater data centers
Prentice Bisbal
pbisbal at pppl.gov
Mon Nov 5 12:55:23 PST 2018
From the wikipedia page:
> The building is accompanied by a series of artificial lakes: one
> formal lake directly opposite that completes the circle of the
> building, and a further four 'ecology' lakes. Together they contain
> about 50,000 m³ of water. This water is pumped through a series of
> heat exchangers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_exchanger> to cool
> the building and to dissipate the heat produced by the wind tunnels.
So this water could definitely be used to cool the data center. I wonder
what that extra heat in the water does to the 'ecology' in those
'ecology lakes'.
Prentice
On 11/05/2018 03:51 PM, C Bergström wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_Technology_Centre
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 4:50 AM C Bergström <cbergstrom at pathscale.com
> <mailto:cbergstrom at pathscale.com>> wrote:
>
> Building cooling maybe.. Then again in the UK I doubt the need
> would be so strong. The building from aerial view is ying/yang so
> it's probably just design
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 4:46 AM Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf
> <beowulf at beowulf.org <mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>> wrote:
>
> Yes. Something exactly like that! Is that what that pond is
> used for? I would expect that is much larger than what is
> needed for a typical data center.
>
> Prentice
>
> On 11/05/2018 01:35 PM, John Hearns via Beowulf wrote:
>> > Honestly, though, I think most of this is moot. With
>> direct-contact liquid cooling and warm-water cooling, I think
>> for most data centers, cooling to ambient air should be
>> adequate. For >places where that isn't enough, I would think
>> a shallow, man-made cooling pond on premises would be an
>> adequate heat sink, without having to go all the way to the
>> ocean. By keeping >it shallow, at night when it cools off,
>> the pond could dump a lot of its heat to the atmosphere.
>>
>> Something like this perhaps?
>> https://youtu.be/0gCXfWCLZAA
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 5 Nov 2018 at 16:01, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf
>> <beowulf at beowulf.org <mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Prentice
>>
>> On 11/05/2018 06:02 AM, Stu Midgley wrote:
>>> As far as I can tell, they are just using the salt water
>>> to reject the heat to. How they get the heat from the
>>> cpu/hot bits to the water is not clearly stated...
>>>
>>> A passive heat exchanger would make energy sense... but
>>> would cost a bomb in engineering... maybe direct fluid
>>> cooling (asetek) with a heat-exchanger to the salt water?
>>>
>>> Either way, its stupid. They could just easily pump the
>>> cool salt water from the ocean into a DC, reject heat to
>>> it using the same methods... and pump it back to the
>>> ocean. Since no real delta in height, it would be
>>> efficient in energy.
>> The issue with this would be the increased maintenance
>> cost of the equipment pumping the salt water to the the
>> DC, do to the corrosion from the salt water, and overall
>> 'dirtiness' of the saltwater. A better approach would be
>> to have a closed loop of treated freshwater going from
>> the data center to the a heat exchanger submerged in the
>> sea. This should reduce maintenance costs for the system.
>>
>> Honestly, though, I think most of this is moot. With
>> direct-contact liquid cooling and warm-water cooling, I
>> think for most data centers, cooling to ambient air
>> should be adequate. For places where that isn't enough, I
>> would think a shallow, man-made cooling pond on premises
>> would be an adequate heat sink, without having to go all
>> the way to the ocean. By keeping it shallow, at night
>> when it cools off, the pond could dump a lot of its heat
>> to the atmosphere.
>>>
>>> OR... just use a boat...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 2:27 PM <jaquilina at eagleeyet.net
>>> <mailto:jaquilina at eagleeyet.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Probably a stupid question here,
>>>
>>> What is the advantage of using salty sea water lets
>>> say over for example
>>> mineral oil? I have seen on you tube these guys
>>> showing that a pc will
>>> still run in a fish tank and all components
>>> submerged in mineral oil?
>>> Yes it will be messier to change components but
>>> would the use of mineral
>>> oil be more efficient?
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2018-11-04 14:10, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
>>> > On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 18:27:05 +0000, you wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> I’m not sure there’s a huge population of
>>> Xcloud-Xbox gamers in
>>> >> Orkney. There's not much daylight this time of
>>> year, of course, so
>>> >> maybe that's what those Orcadians are up to.
>>> >
>>> > Likely just a convenient place for a second test unit.
>>> >
>>> > In a way this is just an extension of the
>>> idea/product Sun came up wth
>>> > where they put a datacentre in a shipping
>>> container with the idea that
>>> > you could quickly get the datacentre where it was
>>> needed.
>>> >
>>> > While I wouldn't say this won't fail, I think
>>> there is a lot of
>>> > attraction to the concept given not just the time
>>> lag do build a
>>> > traditional data centre (mentioned in the
>>> article), but even the cost
>>> > of real estate in many/most places people live
>>> these days. Do you,
>>> > for one example, want to pay NYC rents or just
>>> throw a bunch of pods
>>> > in the Hudson?
>>> >
>>> > I guess once you accept the idea that we no longer
>>> maintain these
>>> > datacentres in the traditional way - we now just
>>> let hardware fail in
>>> > place and ignore it until it's time to replace all
>>> the hardware -
>>> > moving to smaller sealed units doesn't seem to
>>> strange.
>>> > _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr Stuart Midgley
>>> sdm900 at gmail.com <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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