Having access to data drives entire world economies with no exceptions and there is no slowing down in the future; the need for data storage, data technologies and technologies/facilities that supports and enables it will only grow in the future. More data has been created in the last 2 years than ever before in human history. With so many data centers containing racks after racks and rows after rows of data servers, how do we manage our carbon footprint? Data centers have a carbon footprint equivalent to the airline industry. They always have to be switched on, 24 hours a day, regardless whether they are online or offline, and that carbon footprint will only grow larger in the future.
Despite all developments and inventions that could be used for energy sources, fossil fuels still remain the most used energy source today. Fossil fuels are dangerous to the environment releasing a huge amount of carbon into our atmosphere.
The energy consumed by data centers does not only run the servers. Approx. 38% of all the energy used by data centers is used solely to cool the electronics down, and in crypto mines this can be even higher. There are attempts to move data centers to locations where the temperature is lower, like underground, on the ocean or even in the Arctic. All of these are just indicators showing that a proper cooling technology is needed. Data centers need to be closer to where the data is being generated, not in the Arctic solely for the reason of cooling.
That is why Immersion fluid cooling is to exciting, and why we are working to implement it at our BatMine. The interesting thing about Fluid Cooling that is now being considered by major data centers, is, that it was first implemented for in Hong Kong. miners were in desperate need to be cooled off due to Hong Kong humid climate, the cooling shown to be impossible with only air conditioning. Entrepreneurs managing the mine were looking into other options and as a result the idea of Fluid Cooling emerged.
How does Fluid cooling work? Very simple: the entire hardware is basically submerged into a non-conductive fluid that can touch the equipment directly without any sparks involved. Due to fluid cooling option, the electronics does not need to be put far apart in order to be cooled easier such as with air conditioning, but you can put everything close together, and let the fluid go through and cool it down. What used to take up 100% of the available space, takes now 10% and is able to reduce the electricity consumption by 95%.
We’re at at a very important point where all individuals and businesses have to think to themselves: “What are we doing to reduce the power consumption and our carbon footprint, and can we do more?” []
Published at Thu, 07 Mar 2019 16:17:43 +0000
