14 DAY TRIAL // In the last few years data centers have started to get a lot greener than what they were used to be and SGI is fully supporting this trend, the company just announcing the availability of SGI ICE Cube Air, a modular data center that drops HVAC completely in favor of more environmentally friendly air and water cooling.
Capable of housing up to four compute racks, the new ICE Cube Air MDC expands in standard increments out to 80 racks/97,920 cores/143.36 PB and comes with highly efficient fans, along with an innovative three-stage evaporative cooling system.
As a result, this cooling design leads to an impressive power usage effectiveness, supplemental direct expansion or chilled water cooling coils being also provided for users that need to run data servers in extreme environments.
Furthermore, the water-chilled coils require a water flow of only two gallons per minute, a regular garden hose being enough to run this system according to SGI.
The company also states, that by going with their air cooled (or water chilled) modular data centers companies will reduce cooling costs by as much as 80 percent over traditional data centers, a bold claim indeed, although this can certainly be the case when considering how expensive HVAC cooling can prove to be in the long run.
"By offering a standard array of small, medium and large configure-to-order data center designs, customers benefit from a supply chain that will allow them to quickly expand as their business needs grow, regardless of scale," said Patrick Yantz, senior director of Modular Data Center Engineering at SGI.
"We now have three targeted design solutions backed by our global delivery of full service standard or design-to-order modular data centers."
Available right now in 20- and 40-foot length containers, these modular data centers feature single or dual-row designs along with universal configurations, prices starting at $99,000.