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Survey: Rack Density Heading Higher
May 26th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Many new data centers will be built to support power densities of between 10 kW and 20 kW per rack, significantly higher than the 7.4 kW average supported by current facilities, according to a new survey of data center operators released today by Emerson Network Power (EMR). Among the reasons cited for designing for higher density data centers were the need to save facility space, support blade servers and reduce energy costs.The findings were among the data points from Emerson’s bi-annual survey of its Data Center Users Group (DCUG), which polls more than 120 data center, facility and IT managers shared information about future plans for their data centers. The survey results were previewed earlier this month during the two-day DCUG spring conference in Washington, D.C.
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Electronic Medical Records and Data Centers
March 10th, 2009 : Rich MillerThe Obama administration wants health care providers to transition to a paperless records system, which will force hospitals and doctor’s offices to assess whether their data centers are prepared for the demands of electronic medical records. Emerson Network Power worked with BayCare Health System, which operates nine hospitals in the Tampa Bay area, during the organization’s seven-year transition to electronic records. In this video, Peter Panfil, vice president and GM for Liebert AC Power Business, discusses how a shift to electronic records creates additional challenges and requirements in IT infrastructure. This video runs about 2 minutes, 45 seconds.
For more about Emerson, see our Emerson Network Power Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
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Emerson Appoints Lee as CTO
December 9th, 2008 : Rich MillerEmerson Network Power (EMR) has appointed Victor Lee chief technology officer to guide technology innovation, the company said today. Lee will oversee research units developing technologies to address key challenges faced by Emerson’s many customers operating mission-critical data centers.
“As a global technology leader, it is imperative that Emerson Network Power continues to challenge itself and the market to develop innovative technologies that make our customers’ lives easier and businesses more competitive,” Lee said.
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Talking Cooling With Chuck Spears of Emerson
December 2nd, 2008 : Rich MillerIn this interview from the recent Data Center World conference, Chuck Spears of Emerson Network Power shares his views on trends in the data center cooling business. Chuck, who is President of Liebert North America, discusses hot and cold-aisle containment and the differences in data center cooling in the U.S. and Europe. This video runs about 5 minutes.
For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
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Emerson to Consolidate Data Centers
August 29th, 2008 : Rich Miller
Emerson Network Power will consolidate 100 data centers around the world into four facilities, including a new data center in St. Louis that will showcase the company’s cooling technologies, the company said this week. Emerson will also build new facilities in Marshalltown, Iowa; Singapore and a location in “Western Europe,” according to local media.
The new 35,000 square foot facility in the St. Louis area will be a testbed and demo center for Emerson’s latest technologies, according to company spokesman Steve Hassell. ”We want this St. Louis center to be not only a facility that runs the IT part of it but also to really be a showcase for Emerson products, and really the thought leadership that we’ve put into this area,” Hassell said.
Based on its plans for the data center architecture and technology infrastructure, Emerson said it anticipates the new St. Louis facility will receive LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The facility will have one of the largest roof-top solar arrays used by a data center, the company said, which will provide 100 kW power to the IT load. The data center, which is scheduled to open in summer 2009, will include three layers of redundancy, dual utility feeds, redundant UPS protection and onsite generators.
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Emerson Launches Container for Telcos
June 17th, 2008 : Rich MillerEmerson Network Power (EMR) today unveiled its Containerized Computing Solution, a modular approach designed to help telecom companies deploy wireless and broadband services faster and cheaper. Emerson is positioning the product as a “central office in a box,” a slight variation on the recent “data center in a box” container-based solutions introduced by major server vendors such as Sun, Rackable and IBM.
Emerson introduced the Containerized Computing Solution today at the NXTcomm event in Las Vegas. The components included in a container include embedded computing and DC power conversion equipment, precision cooling units, power transfer switches, server racks and enclosures. Emerson Network Power has deployed containerized solutions, but they previously included only infrastructure equipment and not the embedded computing. The containers feature Emerson’s ATCA blade servers housed in a Knurr server cabinet, with power and cooling infrastructure from Liebert.
The new products are designed to help wireless companies expand their networks or quickly replace network infrastructure damaged in a disaster such as a tornado or hurricane. The FCC recently began requiring telecom and wireless companies to provide backup power for cell sites and remote telecom facilities. The new measures were prompted by an FCC review of telecom outages in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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Emerson on Why Rack Design Matters
June 12th, 2008 : Rich MillerDo you ever stop to think about racks and rack design? The folks at Emerson Network Power’s Knurr unit have, and have put together a video discussing why racks matter and the trends that affect how a 19-inch rack is designed. Jeff Sturgeon, Vice President of Marketing and Solutions for Emerson, talks about how Knurr approaches rack design for optimal capacity, cooling and ease of equipment loading.
For more about Emerson, see our Liebert Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
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Liebert: High Density Will Drive Liquid Cooling
September 5th, 2007 : Rich MillerWill liquid cooling ever become a mainstream data center technology? Liquid solutions have shown modest growth in recent years, but resistance remains high in some quarters. A recent SearchDataCenter survey found that 65 percent of respondents said they would never use liquid cooling in their data center.
But the growth of high density blade server installations and virtualization may prompt a change of heart over time, according to Fred Stack, the vice president of marketing at Liebert Precision Cooling, a unit of Emerson Network Power. “The high-density cooling solutions are no longer a small experiment or niche market,” said Stack. “It is becoming a principal design embraced by many industries out there. There are still a fair number of data center operators that tend to spread out rather than design for high capacity. There’s some that have that extra (data center) capacity, but that number is shrinking fast. Some people are limited by the (power available from the) utility company.”
Since cooling represents a large chunk of the energy usage in many data centers, it is a critical focus for managers seeking energy efficienct gains. But there are many strategies to choose between when optimizing data center cooling. At what level do you optimize, for instance: at the room level, the rack level, or even the chip level? There are also choices of cooling agent: air or liquid? If it’s liquid cooling, water or refrigerant?
There’s no “one approach fits all” solution, according to Stack. “One of the first questions is whether you’re going to solve the problem on a rack basis or a room basis,” said Stack. “Then there’s the question of what kind of fluid to use. A very high percentage of the market is going to open architectures and pump refrigerants.”
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