Modern Building Services

22 MODERN BUILDING SERVICES SEPTEMBER 2021 FEATURE PIPED SERVICES & PUMPS Playing it cool – the move towards liquid cooling in data centres Don Mitchell , Data Centre Division Manager at Victaulic, discusses the case for liquid cooling in data centres and why installation is set to become commonplace in the years to come. A s demand for increasingly denseracksandcompute- heavy workloads rises within data centres, could this lead to a wholesale shift in preference from air-to-liquid- based cooling systems? Rising demand Digital transformation has been an ongoing objective for countless organisations for decades. Yet in 2020, we saw progress in this area take centre stage, with many companies placing digitalisation at the top of their to do list. The past year has seen an acceleration of video streaming to keep remote workers connected, organisations expand their use of AI and ML-powered analytics to grow their businesses, and increased cloud adoption to enable businesses to achieve simplified innovation, faster time-to-market, easier scalability, and more. Introduction of 5G technologies will accelerate this growth even more. Remote work and other technological advantages spurred by stay-at-home orders will long outlast the pandemic, granting organisations more flexibility, cost savings, and an overall edge in their business plans. Of course, even before the pandemic, digital transformation was well and truly in full swing. In recent years data centres have been packing more and more computing power into smaller spaces to consolidate workloads and accommodate processing- intensive applications, such as AI and advanced analytics. As a result, each rack requires more energy and generates more heat, putting greater pressure on cooling systems to ensure safe and efficient operations. With advanced IT applications becoming essential for business success, the need to future proof data centres in regard to cooling is key. In fact, a lot of companies are completely unaware of how many high-density applications they will need in the future, with many continuing to emerge each year. Liquid cooling vs air cooling Computer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Data centres have mostly used air cooling since their inception and will likely continue to use it extensively. Liquid cooling is not entirely new, super computers have been using it for decades, and it’s now gaining momentum. Air cooling is simple to understand and works reasonably well with lower quantities of heat. Many innovations in data centre cooling have greatly improved efficiencies of air-cooled IT solutions, but the facts remain, heat transfers much better with liquid, as air can only carry a fraction of the amount of heat that liquid can. As heat density increases, liquid cooling becomes the more efficient and effective solution. It enables operators to use higher temperature liquid to keep IT chips at a suitable temperature, while allowing the use of smaller pumps and pipes versus a larger number of fans and ducts. Instead of large volumes of lukewarm air that needs to be chilled with chiller plants PIPED SERVICES & PUMPS