Monday, November 26, 2012

No. 657: A data center with considerably low power consumption for air-conditioning (November 27, 2012)

Technology:
NEC developed a data center that reduces power consumption considerably. The newly developed system takes in external air from outside and lets inside hot air out from the top of the container efficiently using heat generated by servers. Accordingly, artificial cooling is hardly needed and ventilation alone is needed only in summer. It can reduce the power consumption of air-conditioning by 60%, and can reduce the power consumption of a data center by 20-30% per year. In a data center, power consumption of servers accounts for 50-70% of the total power consumption, and air-conditioning accounts for most of the remaining 30-50%. NEC plans to commercialize the new system in 2014.

The container is 4 m high that is about 1.5 m higher than the conventional container, and partitions are installed inside the container. The internal temperature is kept between 15-32 degrees centigrade to prevent the servers from malfunctioning. It is necessary to run the blower fans in summer when the internal temperature goes up to 40 degrees centigrade, but natural ventilation is enough in spring, autumn, and winter. A new type container can house 200-300 servers. According to an NEC official, a data center that hardly uses blower fans has never been commercialized in the world. With the explosive spread of cloud computing services, it is growing critical to reduce power consumption of a data center. 
Click here for the concept of the system

A conventional data center container 

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