Microsoft server racks submerged into liquid to increase its energy efficiency
Microsoft commenced submerging its server in liquid which may lead to better performance and energy efficiency. The engulfed servers seem like a liquid bath. “We are the first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment,” claims Microsoft.
The process completely sinks server racks in the exclusive non-conductive fluid. The fluorocarbon-based liquid proceeds by removing heat as it directly hits components. The fluid outstretches extreme boiling point (122 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) to condense and fall back into the bath as a raining liquid. It creates a closed-loop cooling system, reducing costs as no energy is needed to move the liquid around the tank, and no chiller is needed for the condenser either.
“It’s essentially a bathtub,” explains Christian Belady, vice president of Microsoft’s data centre advanced development group, in a media interaction.” The rack will lie down inside that bathtub, 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,” he concluded.
In recent years, crypto miners used the technique to mine for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Microsoft followed the path using it to test against spikes of cloud demand and intensive workloads for applications like machine learning.
Most data centres are air-cooled right now, using outside air and cooling it by dropping it to temperatures below 35 degrees Celsius using evaporation. This is known as swamp cooling, but it uses a lot of water in the process.
“It potentially will eliminate the need for water consumption in data centres, so that’s a really important thing for us,” says Belady. “It’s all about driving less and lower impact for wherever we land.”
