What technologies can solve the heat dissipation and energy consumption problems of blade servers?

HP promotes green blade strategy to build a green data center

With the improvement of national policies on energy conservation and consumption reduction, energy conservation and consumption reduction are becoming the focus of the country and the whole society. The rising proportion of IT energy consumption in all electricity use has made it one of the main areas advocated by society to save energy and reduce consumption. As a leading IT company in the world and an enterprise with a strong sense of social responsibility, Hewlett-Packard Company actively advocates the concept of "green IT", increases research and development, and launches a series of innovative technologies and products aimed at green IT. On October 26th, Hewlett-Packard Company held a seminar on "Green Blades" in Xiangshan Hotel, which introduced the green innovation technology and environmental protection and energy-saving advantages of HP's new generation data center and the new generation BladeSystem c-Class in power supply and heat dissipation, and introduced a complete solution for green data center.

for a long time, more powerful data center processing capacity has been our goal. However, with the increasing energy expenditure today, the other side of the development of processing capacity is the need to consume more resources. Moreover, with the increasing density of servers, the demand for power supply also increases correspondingly, and thus more heat is generated. In the past ten years, the power supply density of servers has increased tenfold on average. According to IDC's forecast, by 28, the IT procurement cost will be equal to the energy cost. On the other hand, cooling accounts for 6% to 7% of the energy consumption of data centers. Therefore, with the rising energy prices, the power supply and cooling of data centers have become an unavoidable problem for all data centers.

Hewlett-Packard Company has been committed to the research of energy-saving and consumption-reducing technologies for more than ten years, and has been committed to three levels of innovation: first, environmental energy-saving technologies at the data center level; The second is the green design of IT products such as servers and storage at the system level; The third is the research and development of key energy-saving components, such as technological innovation in power supply, refrigeration and fans. At present, these innovative technologies from HP Labs are leading the green trend in the industry. For the data center environment, HP has introduced a new dynamic intelligent cooling system to help customers build a new generation of green data centers or transform the original data centers; On the equipment level, HP's new generation of green blade server system has become the most critical infrastructure for energy saving in the future data center with innovations in Thermal Logic technology and PARSEC architecture. At the same time, these innovative technologies are embodied in some key energy-saving components, such as Active Cool fans and dynamic power saver (DPS). Hewlett-Packard's green innovation will help customers reduce operating costs by improving energy efficiency.

HP DSC precise cooling realizes green data center

The traditional computer room of data center adopts the average cooling design mode, but at present, with the emergence and popularization of rack servers and blade servers, the data center has a mixed mode of high-density servers and low-density. Because of the uneven density of servers, the heat generated is also uneven, and the traditional average cooling method of data center has been difficult to meet the demand. There are two current situations in the data center: First, over 85% of the computer rooms have excessive cooling problems; Second, only one-third of the power supply in the data center is used on IT equipment, and the cooling cost accounts for two-thirds of the total power supply. Therefore, reducing refrigeration energy consumption is the key to energy saving in data centers.

aiming at the disadvantages of average cooling in traditional data center computer rooms, HP has introduced a brand-new solution based on dynamic intelligent cooling technology-"DSC, Dynamic Smart Cooling)". The goal of dynamic intelligent cooling technology is to improve refrigeration efficiency through accurate refrigeration. DSC can dynamically adjust the cooling system according to the server operating load to reduce energy consumption. Depending on the size of the data center, the energy saving can reach 2% to 45%.

DSC combines HP's existing innovative technologies in power supply and cooling, such as HP Thermal Logic, an important component of the c-Class architecture of HP blade server system. By installing many thermal detectors connected to the data center on the server rack, the temperature change information of the server can be transmitted to the central monitoring system at any time. When the detector sends a message that the temperature of a server is rising, the central monitoring system will send instructions to the nearest cooling equipment to increase the power of refrigeration to reduce the temperature of that server. When the temperature of the server drops, the central monitoring system will send instructions to the nearby cooling equipment to reduce power according to the new information transmitted by the detector. HP's experimental data show that in the same data center of HP Lab, without DSC technology, the cooling needs 117 kW, while the DSC system only needs 72 kW.

HP blade system: the key production line of green data center

If the data center is regarded as an "IT factory", then the energy saving and consumption reduction of the "IT factory" should not only realize the energy saving in the "factory-level" environment through DSC and other technologies, but also the energy saving and consumption reduction of each "production line", and the production line of the data center is IT equipment such as servers and storage. At present, the blade system meets the new requirements of the new generation data center for servers by saving space, facilitating centralized management, easy expansion and providing uninterrupted services, and is becoming an important "production line" of the future data center. Therefore, the energy saving and environmental protection technology of the blade system itself is the key to energy saving and consumption reduction in the future data center.

HP BladeSystem c-Class, a new generation of green blade system of Hewlett-Packard Company, is based on the modular design of industrial standards. It not only integrates blade server and blade storage, but also integrates many elements of data center such as network, power supply/cooling and management, that is, it integrates computing, storage, network, power supply/cooling and management. At the same time, in the innovative BladeSystem c-Class blade system, the requirements of modern data center infrastructure for power supply, cooling, connection, redundancy, security, calculation and storage are fully considered.

on the basis of standardized hardware platform, the three key technologies of HP blade system are far behind competitors. The first is HP Insight Management Technology, which realizes the unified and automatic management of physical and virtual servers, storage, network, power supply and cooling system through a single console, which improves the management efficiency by 1 times and the ratio of administrator equipment reaches 1: 2. The second is energy intelligent control technology-reducing energy consumption by effectively adjusting power and cooling. Compared with traditional fans, super cooling fans reduce server air flow by 4% and energy consumption by 5%. Finally, the virtual connection architecture-greatly reducing the number of cables, without the need for additional switching interface management. Allow the server to be added, replaceable and movable, without the administrator's participation in the change of SAN and LAN.

At present, HP has a complete blade server strategy and product line, including ProLiant blade servers supporting 2 or 4 channels, Integrity blade systems using An Teng chips, storage blades and backup blades. At the same time, HP BladeSystem c-Class blade server system has been widely recognized by customers. According to the report released by IDC in the fourth quarter of 26, HP occupies the first place in the world in terms of factory turnover and shipment of blade servers. In the second quarter of 27, HP's blade market share was 47.2%, 15% ahead of its competitors, and the gap will continue to widen. As the leader of the blade market, HP BladeSystem c-Class blade system will become the key infrastructure of the data center.

PARSEC architecture and energy intelligent control: two core strategies of green production line

As the key infrastructure of data center, green is one of the important development trends of blade system and the key to energy saving in data center. In the innovative design of HP BladeSystem c-Class blade system, green is one of its key innovative technologies, and its unique PARSEC architecture and energy intelligent control technology are the two key technologies of this green production line.

HP PARSEC architecture is another innovation of HP blade system for green strategy. At present, rack servers all adopt the layout of several small local fans, which will lead to higher cost, higher power, poor heat dissipation, power consumption and space. Hp parsec (parallel redundant scalable enterprise cooling) architecture is a mixed mode that combines the characteristics of local and central cooling. The chassis is divided into four areas, and each area is equipped with a fan to provide direct cooling service for the blade servers in that area and provide cooling service for all other components. Because the cooling standards of server blades and storage blades are different, and the cooling standards are suitable for the basic components inside the chassis, sometimes different types of blades appear in multiple cooling zones. With HP's innovative Active Cool fan, users can easily obtain different cooling configurations. HP fan design supports hot plug, and the airflow can be adjusted by adding or removing it, so that it can effectively pass through the whole system and make cooling more effective.

HP's Thermal Logic technology is a system-level energy-saving method that combines HP's innovative technologies in power supply and heat dissipation. This technology provides embedded temperature measurement and control capabilities. Through real-time thermal monitoring, it can track the heat dissipation of the chassis, the internal and external temperatures and the power consumption of the server in each rack, which enables users to know and match the system operation requirements in time, and at the same time set the temperature threshold manually or automatically. Or automatically start cooling or adjust the cooling level to cope with and solve the generated heat, thus achieving the most accurate power supply and cooling control capability. Through intelligent energy control management, customers can dynamically apply thermal control to optimize performance, power consumption and thermal performance, so as to make full use of power budget and ensure flexibility. Using energy intelligent control technology, the number of servers that can be supplied with the same power is doubled, and the efficiency is improved by 3% compared with the traditional rack stacking equipment. When more servers are inserted into each rack, the power supply and cooling consumption will remain the same or decrease, and the components required for the overall design will also decrease.

Active Cool fan, DPS, power regulator: every component of the production line should save energy

as a "green production line", HP BladeSystem c-Class blade system has realized energy saving and consumption reduction at the "production line" level through energy intelligent control technology and PARSEC architecture, and the technological innovation of each component in this production line is the key technical guarantee of the green production line. For example, the innovative Active Cool fan, the ProLiant power regulator for intelligent power management and the dynamic power regulation technology.

the fan is the key component of heat dissipation. Is the fan design as big as possible? The answer is no. Some blade server products in the market use large centralized cooling fans, which not only occupy a large space, make a lot of noise, have poor redundancy, have air leakage channels, but also have excessive supply and require a high power supply load.

innovative Active Cool fans are used in HP blade servers. The design concept of Active Cool fan is derived from aircraft technology, and it is small in size, with a blade speed of 136 mph, which generates strong airflow and consumes less power than traditional fan design. At the same time, it has the characteristics of high air volume (CFM), high wind pressure, the best noise effect and the best power consumption. It can cool 16 blade servers with only 1 watts of electricity. This innovative fan is currently applying for 2 patents. Active Cool fan with PARSEC cooling technology can automatically adjust the working state of the fan according to the load of the server, and make the most energy-saving airflow and the most effective cooling channel to cool the required components, effectively reducing the cooling energy consumption. Compared with the traditional cooling fan, the power consumption is reduced by 66% and the data center energy consumption is reduced by 5%.

in terms of power supply, compared with the traditional stand-alone power supply mode of the rack server, HP's blade system adopts centralized power supply, realizes intelligent power management through innovative ProLiant power regulator and dynamic power adjustment technology, and adopts targeted strategies according to power supply conditions, which greatly saves power consumption.

ProLiant power regulator can realize server-level and policy-based power management. Power adjustment can provide power for CPU according to its application, provide full power for CPU application when necessary, and put CPU in power-saving mode when it is not needed, which enables the server to realize policy-based power management. In fact, the power state of CPU can be controlled in two ways: dynamic and static, that is, the power adjustment scheme can be set to a static working mode with continuous low power consumption, or it can be set to a dynamic mode that automatically adjusts power supply according to CPU usage. At present, the power adjustment proposal can be applied to AMD or Intel chips. For convenience, HP can display the usage data of the processor through the iLO advanced interface and perform configuration operation through this window. Power supply adjustment can save power and cooling cost on the premise of not losing performance.

HP's innovative dynamic power saver (DPS) can monitor the power consumption in the chassis in real time and automatically adjust the power supply according to the demand. Because the power supply can be most effective when it operates under high load, DPS further improves the power consumption by providing the power distribution that matches the overall infrastructure requirements of users. For example, when the server has less demand for power supply, only one pair of power supply modules can be started, and the other power supply modules are in stand by state, instead of turning on all power supply units, but each power supply unit runs at a lower efficiency. When the demand for power supply increases, STAND BY's power supply module can be started in time to meet the power supply demand. This ensures that the power supply system always maintains the most efficient working state, while ensuring sufficient power supply, but realizes power saving through lower power supply load. Through dynamic power adjustment technology, 2 cases with power of .75/ kWh can save about $5,545 per year.

Conclusion

The increasing energy expenditure of traditional data centers has attracted much attention. While the power supply cost of servers has doubled in the past decade, the cooling system has also brought unprecedented pressure to the infrastructure construction of data centers. In order to solve the problem of rising heat and energy consumption, Hewlett-Packard Company innovatively introduced a new generation of green blade system BladeSystem c-Class and dynamic intelligent refrigeration technology.