Technologies Behind NEC's High Temperature Ambient Server

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Technologies Behind NEC’s High Temperature Ambient Server 1. What Are High Temperature Ambient (HTA) Servers and Storage Devices? 1.1 Introduction Cloud computing and other advanced information & communications technologies (ICT) are changing business and society. But as cloud services expand, so do the data centers housing the increasingly large numbers of servers and storages devices required to deliver these services, leading to increased power consumption. Corporations looking to make their data centers more power efficient and reduce their operating overhead are therefore searching for new and effective power saving measures. To address these issues, NEC is providing HTA servers and storage devices as well as solutions to help improve the power efficiency of the cooling systems and facility equipment used in data centers. This paper describes NEC’s technologies for realizing HTA servers and storage devices, including the verification tests performed on the HTA servers and storage devices. 1.2 Steps taken by NEC to realize power saving servers and storage devices Looking at a data center’s power consumption figures classified by usage, ICT equipment such as servers and storage devices accounts for 53% of consumed power, whereas the cooling systems, power distribution, lighting equipment, and other facilities account for the rest (47%). (These are actual values measured in an NEC data center.) In fact, the cooling systems accounts for as much as 31% of data center power consumption. It is therefore important to reduce the power consumed by the cooling system as well as by ICT equipment in order to achieve power savings in data centers. Power Consumption in Data Center Classified by Usage Lighting and other equipment Power supply equipment 7 9 1.3 NEC’s HTA servers and storage devices To achieve further power reduction, NEC has released a platform that operates in HTA servers and storage devices that operate up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The maximum ambient operating temperature for conventional servers and storage devices is generally 35°C. NEC has successfully increased this limit by 5°C to 40°C by selecting components that enable optimization of cooling design and airflow. This makes it possible to set the cooling system in the data center to a higher temperature, reducing the power consumption. The figure below shows an example of a customer that is using ICT equipment installed in 2007. If this customer replaces their existing devices with NEC’s HTA power saving servers and storage devices, the ICT equipment will consume less power and therefore generate less heat. This means that the cooling system will need less power to cool the data center. Power consumption can also be reduced by elevating the cooling system temperature setting by 5°C. These measures add up to a reduction in cooling system power consumption of approximately 40% and a decrease in data center power consumption of 34% (as estimated by NEC). Breakdown of current power consumption in data center* 1 Other facilities: 16% Cooling: 31% Networks: 11% Storage devices: 9% Servers: 33% Before Reduced by 40% Reduced by 50% Reduced by 53% *1 Actual values measured in an NEC data center Power consumption reduced by 34% After Cooling system 31 ICT equipment 53 2. NEC’s Technologies for Realizing HTA Products Power saving measures for cooling systems are as important as improving the power efficiency of ICT equipment. NEC has been addressing power saving for IT platforms since 2007. We have achieved significant power savings in server and storage devices by implementing the internal airflow designs and cooling technologies proven by us in supercomputer and mainframe development. With the rapid shift to cloud computing, ICT systems are being consolidated in data centers, making it important to implement power saving measures for the whole data center, including the cooling system, power supply equipment, and lighting equipment. Determined to take a proactive approach to an issue that all corporations will have to address, NEC launched a project in 2010 to save power in data centers as a whole. NEC provides HTA servers in its Express5800 series x86 server lineup. The Express5800 series incorporates the Intel® Xeon® processor with excellent power efficiency. Power consumption by these servers is also reduced by adopting the 80 PLUS® PL ATINUM power supply with high conversion efficiency along with other power saving components. In addition, the Express5800 series lets you set a power cap value to control power by using the bundled ESMPRO server management software. In addition to the power saving features in the server itself, NEC has also thoroughly reviewed the airflow design and cooling components in the housing to enable high temperatures. The following sections describe NEC’s original designs for realizing power saving. © 2012 NEC Corporation The NEC logo is a registered trademark or a trademark of NEC Corporation in Japan and other countries. 2
2.1 Server cooling technologies System design technology for optimizing the airflow NEC has applied to the Express5800 series the advanced cooling technologies acquired when developing mainframes, which require stability and robustness, and fast and highly efficient supercomputers. Stable operation at 40°C has been realized by thoroughly redesigning the airflow and cooling components in the server. One of these cooling technologies used for improving the cooling efficiency is an airflow guide. The challenge of server cooling is how efficiently cool air taken in from the front air inlet is transferred to the outlet on the rear. The Express5800 series servers incorporate an airflow guide to adjust the airflow. The shape and angle of the airflow guide is designed to generate the optimal airflow so that the required amount of cool air is delivered to each component without being heated. As a result of this design, 2U rack mount servers can now incorporate hard disk drives not only in the front of the main unit but also in the rear. Express5800/R120d-2E can incorporate a total of twenty-six 2.5-inch hard disk drives: 24 drives in the front and 2 drives in the rear. (Twelve 3.5-inch hard disk drives can be incorporated in the front.) Increasing the number of hard disk drives that can be incorporated eliminates the need to add servers to secure hard disk capacity, resulting in an efficient use of rack space. A large hard disk drive capacity is also beneficial for meeting big data needs. Front HDD cage Front GT110d Parts are placed parallel to the airflow direction Airflow Power supply fan Heat sink Heat exhaust fan GT110d-S Cool down CPU Cool down PCI. Offset fan placement Fan for cooling down 2.5-inch SAS HDD Airflow Offset placement of fan for effective cooling — Optimal placement of power supply unit in 2-way rack server — NEC has enabled a maximum ambient operating temperature of 40°C in 2-way rack servers which incorporate two CPUs in a single server chassis, by conducting complex cooling simulations and operation tests. The layout of the power supply unit leverages NEC’s expertise to improve the cooling performance in 2-way rack servers. These servers require a high cooling efficiency because parts that generate heat, such as the 24 DIMMs and CPUs with a thermal design power of 135 W, are placed at a high density. By placing the power supply units and CPUs as shown in the figure below, cool air can be supplied to both the power supply unit and CPUs in such a way that air heated by the CPUs does not flow into the power supply unit again. The cooling performance of the two power supply units has also been improved by separating them, and the airflow efficiency has been raised by laying out the power supply units and CPUs symmetrically. 2.5-inch drives (24 units) 3.5-inch drives (12 units) Rear Rear HDD cage Airflow R120d-1M Rear 2.5-inch drives (2 units) Guide cool air to the HDDs in the rear by fine-tuning the airflow Front Placing supply units away from the hot air flowing from the CPUs Layout technology to optimize airflow NEC has devised a layout to optimize airflow by leveraging the strength of its in-house design and development of motherboards. Cool air is designed to flow in a straight line from the front intake to the rear of the housing in this design. In tower-type servers, memory slots are placed horizontally so that the airflows in a straight line, whereas these slots are generally placed vertically. In addition, a larger heat sink and duct are employed to efficiently cool down the CPUs which generate a large amount of heat. Offset placement, in which the position of blower fan is intentionally shifted, is used to generate airflow that allows a single fan to cool down both the CPUs and the PCI slots. On top of that, this product is designed to allow airflow in a straight line from heat sources by inclining the heat exhaust fan to directly and efficiently cool down the PCI slot, which generates heat. Operation guaranteed at an ambient temperature of 40°C to help reduce the power consumption of cooling units A cooling design that enables operation at an ambient temperature of 40°C was realized in an innovative 2-way rack server by conducting complex cooling simulations and operation tests. (The guaranteed ambient operating temperature is generally 35°C.) Power supply unit Express5800/ R120d-1M Airflow The cooling performance of the power supply unit was improved by placing the power supply units at positions so that the airflow heated by the CPUs could not reach them and also separating them (i.e., they could be supplied with fresh air). An efficient airflow was realized by a symmetric layout. Large CPU heat sink (supporting 135W CPU) Power supply unit Airflow Express5800/ R120d-2M © 2012 NEC Corporation The NEC logo is a registered trademark or a trademark of NEC Corporation in Japan and other countries. 3
Page 1: White Paper Technologies Behind NEC
Page 5 and 6: 3.1 Direct free air cooling verific
Page 7 and 8: using a UPS or other device in the

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