Microsoft is beginning to submerge its servers in liquid to improve their performance and energy efficiency. A rack of servers is presently being utilized for production loads in what resembles a liquid bath. This immersion process has existed in the business for a couple of years at this point, yet Microsoft claims it’s “the first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment.”
The cooling works by totally submerging server racks in a uniquely designed non-conductive liquid. The fluorocarbon-based liquid works by removing heat as it straightforwardly hits components and the fluid reaches at a lower boiling point (122 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) to condense and fall back into the bath as a raining liquid. This makes a shut circle cooling framework, lessening costs as no energy is expected to move the fluid around the tank, and no chiller is required for the condenser by the condenser either.
“It’s essentially a bath tub,” explains Christian Belady, vice president of Microsoft’s data center advanced development group, in an interview with The Verge. “The rack will lie down inside that bath tub, and what you’ll see is boiling just like you’d see boiling in your pot. The boiling in your pot is at 100 degrees Celsius, and in this case it’s at 50 degrees Celsius.”
This kind of liquid cooling has been utilized by cryptominers lately to dig for bitcoin and other cryptographic forms of money. This technique enlivened Microsoft to preliminary its utilization throughout the last few years, utilizing it to test against spikes of cloud interest and concentrated jobs for applications like machine learning.
Most data centers are air cooled at the present time, utilizing outside air and cooling it by dropping it to temperatures under 35 degrees Celsius utilizing vanishing. This is known as marsh cooling, yet it utilizes a ton of water simultaneously. This new fluid shower strategy is intended to lessen water use. “It potentially will eliminate the need for water consumption in data centers, so that’s a really important thing for us,” says Belady. “It’s really all about driving less and lower impact for wherever we land.”
This tub of servers additionally permits Microsoft to all the more tightly pack hardware together, which ought to lessen the measure of space needed in the long haul contrasted with traditional air cooling. Microsoft is testing this at first with a little inside creation responsibility, with plans to utilize it all the more extensively later on. “It’s in a small data center, and we’re looking at one rack’s worth,” says Belady. “We have a whole phased approach, and our next phase is pretty soon with multiple racks.”
Microsoft will be basically studying the reliability implications of this new cooling and what kinds of burst responsibilities it could even assist with for cloud and AI interest. “We expect much better reliability. Our work with the Project Natick program a few years back really demonstrated the importance of eliminating humidity and oxygen from an environment,” explains Belady.
Project Natick saw Microsoft sink a whole server farm to the lower part of the Scottish ocean, plunging 864 workers and 27.6 petabytes of capacity into the water. The investigation was a triumph, and Microsoft had only one-eighth the disappointment pace of a land-based server farm. “What we’re expecting with immersion is a similar trend, because the fluid displaces the oxygen and the humidity, and both of those create corrosion … and those are the things that create failure in our systems,” says Belady
A piece of this work is likewise identified with Microsoft’s environmental pledge to tackle water scarcity. The organization has resolved to replenish much more water than it utilizes for its worldwide activities by 2030. This includes Microsoft utilizing an on location water assortment framework at its workplaces and gathering buildup from forced air systems to water plants. All things considered, Microsoft pulled out almost 8 million cubic meters of water from city frameworks and other neighborhood sources in 2019, contrasted with somewhat more than 7 million out of 2018.
Microsoft’s push to address its water utilization will be amazingly difficult given its pattern toward more water use, yet projects like two-stage drenching will absolutely help if it’s carried out more extensively. “Our goal is to get to zero water usage,” says Belady. “That’s our metric, so that’s what we’re working towards.”
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