Nov. 7, 2002 --There will soon be a new paradigm in data center cooling. That much the experts can agree on.
But will it involve air, water, or refrigerant as the primary cooling medium? That's where the debate begins and the vendors part ways.
What's clear is that as more data center operators switch to ultra-thin "blade" servers, cooling technologies will be built directly into racks and cabinets to provide more targeted and efficient cooling. In the next several years, competing solutions will vie for the hearts, minds and IT dollars of data center operators.
The future of cooling products was discussed at a vendor panel at the Oct. 23 meeting of the 7x24 Exchange of the Delaware Valley at the group's monthly meeting in King of Prussia, Pa.
Panelists said advances in cooling won't happen overnight due to a different kind of chilling effect - the slowdown in technology spending by cost-conscious service providers and enterprise companies.
"The economy will slow the move to next-generation servers, but we think that companies will eventually adopt them to consolidate space," said panel moderator Tom Mangan, President of LEAD Technologies in Haddonfield, NJ. "We'll basically be creating entire rooms of high-density servers."
"The data center is going to change fairly radically, with specialized products to take care of these high-density loads," said Dan Baer, vice president of OEM products for Liebert Corp.
"Right now, you're probably at about 50 watts per square foot" energy usage in finished data center space, said Baer. "Based on what we see, sometime in the next three to five years you'll be in the 150 watts a square foot range."
Much is bound to change, including the way energy usage is measured within the data center.
"Watts per square foot analysis kind of goes out the window when you're putting this kind of load into a cabinet," said Ray Strickland of Sanmina-SCI, who said that watts per cabinet will likely become the new measurement standard.

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