[Beowulf] More about those underwater data centers

Mon Nov 5 12:59:47 PST 2018

Forget lakes why not build a moat around the data center and use that 
water to cool it and no lake ecologies are touched or harmed in the 
cooling of these buildings?

On 2018-11-05 20:55, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf wrote:
> 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 [1] 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> 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> 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> 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> 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
>> 
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> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_exchanger
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