weird but cool cooling solution for rack servers

[samiscool51]

it's bases on whole room water cooling, but for a server rack.
the cooling solution would involve something with a air con unit but that i don't know if that would work
my boss said if i can get it to work he would be happy to let me do this project over the Christmas holidays on the work servers
so what do you guys think would it be a good idea to do something like this?

 

[ARikozuM]

5 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

it's bases on whole room water cooling, but for a server rack.
the cooling solution would involve something with a air con unit but that i don't know if that would work
my boss said if i can get it to work he would be happy to let me do this project over the Christmas holidays on the work servers
so what do you guys think would it be a good idea to do something like this?

 

You would have to vent the heat elsewhere. Personally, I would just put a flexible tube to a vent so the filtration system pumps the heat out.

[Enderman]

There already millions of servers in the world that are watercooled.

All of google's servers are watercooled.

Just google "watercooled server rack" and get some inspiration from there.

 

BTW it will cost several thousand dollars to have a massive cooling system for just a single rack, and server watercooling hardware is not cheap.

Usually people buy already watercooled blades if they want to do something like this, you do not install consumer liquid cooling parts on a server.

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There already millions of servers in the world that are watercooled.

All of google's servers are watercooled.

Just google "watercooled server rack" and get some inspiration from there.

 

BTW it will cost several thousand dollars to have a massive cooling system for just a single rack, and server watercooling hardware is not cheap.

Usually people buy already watercooled blades if they want to do something like this, you do not install consumer liquid cooling parts on a server.

I had no idea that servers were water-cooled. I always thought the cabinet would be designed so that heat would only travel into the ventilation system immediately.

[SCHISCHKA]

water cooling or not you will still be introducing the same heat to the room. 

your picture has no radiator.

Im not sure if benefits of datacenter water cooling would scale to one rack.

I think you would be better to put aircon in the room.

[leadeater]

This is actually something I am planning on doing. Forget the aircon/chiller as part of the loop as that won't work, not well enough to be of any benefit and would cost WAY too much.

 

There are two ways this is done in the industry now:

• Rack water cooling
• Direct to chip (much like what we do on our desktops)

Rack water cooling circulates water through a mostly sealed rack where the heat from the servers is exchanged in to the rack itself and the water then moves the heat away to a passive cooling unit/tower outside the room.

 

Direct to chip is a full purpose built design and uses drip-less quick disconnects on the servers to plum them in to the cooling loop, more efficient but more complicated and costly and much higher risk.

 

http://www.asetek.com/data-center/oem-data-center-coolers/rackcdu-d2c/

 

There are other factors to be aware of too. You have to be careful of things like hard drives as enterprise disks run very hot and if you reduce the airflow in the server you can induce rapid failure of these, and potentially other components of the server. It is generally a bad idea to convert an air cool server to water cooled as rack servers are very highly optimized and engineered, messing with that can turn out very badly.

 

What I personally plan on doing is Direct to Chip using custom built servers with custom cases and at the top of the rack will be a 4U/5U rackmount chassis that will contain all the pumps and radiators. The rack will be sealed at the back and split sealed front to back in a way that air must flow through the servers to get to the back and air can only exit the top of the rack (cannot pass back to the front). I'll then duct the air directly out of the room. This is only a 1 or 2 rack solution but that is all I'll ever personally need.

[samiscool51]

1 hour ago, SCHISCHKA said:

water cooling or not you will still be introducing the same heat to the room. 

your picture has no radiator.

the cooling solution is to basically

but a crap load of copper pipes into the heart of out air con system, it's next to the servers and it can get to about 12°c on a hot day and on a cold day it can get to 7°c

thats how i going to vent the heat

1 hour ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Im not sure if benefits of datacenter water cooling would scale to one rack.

I think you would be better to put aircon in the room.

the air con is having problems and this was an idea i have had for about 1-2 years and the boss said it would be an interesting idea to try

it's mainly designed for hotter days, the air con has problems getting cool air to the server room on a hot day, we rent the place so we can't replace it

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

There already millions of servers in the world that are watercooled.

All of google's servers are watercooled.

Just google "watercooled server rack" and get some inspiration from there.

i didn't know google did this, thats cool

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

BTW it will cost several thousand dollars to have a massive cooling system for just a single rack, and server watercooling hardware is not cheap.

Usually people buy already watercooled blades if they want to do something like this, you do not install consumer liquid cooling parts on a server.

i was just going to use comsumer parts as i didn't know that server ones where available

it won't cost much, plastic pipes are cheep and i will be using copper wherever i can (e.g. cooling solution, in the servers etc.)

 

 

this is how the cooling solution is going to work

this is just a draft, it might look different in the final version

[Nikolithebear]

ISP's and datacenter already implement these ideas in heavy and insane workloads.  Its very neat! 

[SCHISCHKA]

ok so you want water cooling with the radiators next to the aircon?

[samiscool51]

1 hour ago, SCHISCHKA said:

ok so you want water cooling with the radiators next to the aircon?

no the air con unit room is next to the server room, i will just have pipes in the unit itself as it has a lot of space for storing air

don't know why it has that but i'm no aerodynamic expert

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, samiscool51 said:

the air con is having problems and this was an idea i have had for about 1-2 years and the boss said it would be an interesting idea to try

it's mainly designed for hotter days, the air con has problems getting cool air to the server room on a hot day, we rent the place so we can't replace it

That is just a classic sign of the air con unit needing re-gasing, get a maintenance company in to give it a once over and it'll back to brand new.

[Enderman]

6 hours ago, samiscool51 said:

it won't cost much, plastic pipes are cheep and i will be using copper wherever i can (e.g. cooling solution, in the servers etc.)

Then don't do it...

If you want to put water inside critical stuff like servers you should only use professionally made server cooling systems.