The challenges of controlling power distribution and system cooling pose an eternal struggle for the data centre manager.  Rackable Systems’ radical new CloudRack C2 cabinets herald a sea change in the way power and cooling are managed in the data centre

Demands on the data centre keep on growing.  Data centres continually need more space, more servers, more storage, more power, more cooling – but costs must be kept as low as possible.  As a result, forward thinking hardware vendors in the data centre space are beginning to provide more innovative solutions to the perennial problems of ensuring maximum capacity and optimum efficiency at minimum expense.  To address these concerns, Rackable Systems has developed a high density cabinet that allows data centres to operate at much higher temperatures and provides savings, thanks to a variety of design innovations.
With CloudRack C2, all power distribution and fan cooling is handled at the cabinet level - the 24 inch wide 23U or 46U cabinets accommodate server trays that are fan-less, do not have individual power supply units (PSUs) and have no cover.  This tray arrangement brings a breadth of benefits.  Firstly, each server tray provides more space for processing cores or storage, providing maximum density – up to 1,280 cores per cabinet.  Secondly, coverless trays mean that internal cabinet airflow is much improved, facilitating much higher operating temperatures – therefore reducing cooling costs.  But, overall, it is the handling of power and cooling at the cabinet-level that differentiates CloudRack C2 as a uniquely efficient option for the data centre.

Power XE
Rackable Systems developed Power XE technology to tackle the inherent problem of ‘stranded power’ – the power capacity a data centre pays for, but ultimately does not use.  The cabinet-level power distribution model provides nearly perfect (more than 95 percent) phase balancing.  It also removes the need for individual, server-level power supplies – instead, hot-swappable, redundant, rack-level power supplies are used which introduce no incremental cost or loss of efficiency.  Hot-pluggable, N+1 redundant rectifiers significantly improve power distribution effectiveness by converting incoming AC power to 99 percent efficient 12V DC power to the trays.  Power XE also maximises the number of servers that can operate on the same circuit by minimising power harmonics in the power mains.

Higher temperatures – lower costs
Perhaps the most important aspect of CloudRack C2 is that it is thermally optimised to allow data centres to operate at much higher temperatures – up to 40º C (104º F).  This higher temperature tolerance means reduced power consumption by Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, which in turn helps to dramatically reduce overall data centre operating costs.  Efficient cabinet-level cooling is achieved with hot-swappable N+1 redundant autonomic fan arrays that can be serviced on the fly without system interruption.  These intelligent fan arrays auto-adjust fan speed based on internal cabinet temperature, and can deliver more than 80 percent reduction in consumed fan power compared with conventional AC enclosures.

Build to order convenience
Rackable builds all systems to order, so pro-active savings can be made by avoiding costly potential integration issues.  A vast range of processor, disk, memory and networking combinations is on offer, which provides the efficiency and up-time gains that are achieved from absolute system optimisation for specific applications.  CloudRack C2 supports server trays based on the newly available Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series (Nehalem) and the latest AMD Opteron processors – which make them ideal for high-density virtualisation and cluster and cloud computing applications.  CloudRack C2 trays can also be based on Rackable's MicroSlice – a server architecture that is extremely low power (drawing as few as 72 watts per server). MicroSlice is designed with virtualisation in mind.  MicroSlice handles virtualisation at the hardware level and thereby removes the need for expensive third-party virtualisation software.

Approach brings costs benefits
Given the current economic climate, the pressure is on to make data centre cost savings wherever possible. Coupled with power availability issues and rising bills, data centre managers who find themselves under scrutiny to demonstrate improvements can turn to products like CloudRack C2 to deliver.  The density, power distribution and cooling efficiencies that CloudRack C2 achieves enables data centre managers to show both significant performance gains at the same time as helping to reduce overall data centre operating expense.