[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power -- off grid

[Sean Reifschneider]

Chad Perrin wrote:
> Holy crap -- they were granted a patent for that?

I haven't looked into the patent, but I think it might involve a lot of
specifics about the way they are managing the servers in that environment.
It sounded like they were trying to make the customers only access the cold
side rather than allowing access from the cold side to the hot.  Which
makes sense, because if there was any pressure differential between the two
sides a traditional door could not only leak a lot but also pose quite a
hazard -- either it would be hard to close or hard to open and slam
(possibly taking body parts with it) when it closed.  1psi across the
surface of a door can be a lot of force...

Anyway, it sounded like they were trying to make the servers kind of like
blades, but in a more standard form-factor.  So customers could pull out
their machines, poke around with them, then slide them back into their
slot, and have all the connections on the back made for them.

Which seems more more reasonably patentable.

Though it does remind me of Equinix's patent.  They run cable trays around
their data-center and they have 3 tiers of these trays, one for fiber, one
for copper networking, and one for power.  IIRC, it's fiber on bottom and
power on top, because fiber is least likely to burst into flames, though
there's also a case for net then fiber then power to reduce the
inductive signal between power and Ethernet...

They have a patent on this.   Because it allows them to recable easily, and
also doesn't require a raised floor.  The only Equinix datacenter I've been
in was one they purchased from someone else, and it had raised floor in it,
so I don't know what they do with the cooling, but I imagine they normally
run that overhead too.

Sean
-- 
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability

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