[Beowulf] Google greywater cooling

Mark Hahn hahn at mcmaster.ca
Thu Mar 22 08:04:19 PDT 2012


> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/google_greywater_data_center_cooling/

I grew up in a city cooled by a central evaporative water-chilling plant,
so I'm always surprised how unusual this sort of project is.

does anyone have comments on how to enable/encourage/foster less 
conventional datacenter engineering?

I've participated in two DC projects, and both went with safe, boring
and inefficient solutions, simply because power costs weren't high enough
to motivate any deviation from utter conventionality.  power costs are
somewhat hidden on uni campuses, and people involved are very, extremely,
hyper-risk-averse...

I suppose part of the problem is in retrofitting a green DC into 
existing buildings - it's a lot easier if you can plan a new building
to, for instance, take advantage of waste heat.

I'm also interested in anyone who is currently running clusters at 
higher than conventional/ASHRAE temperatures.

thanks, mark hahn.



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