Digital infrastructure provider, GlobalConnect Group, says that it is the first colocation provider in Europe to offer submerged cooling to its customers, reducing data centre power consumption for cooling by up to 90 per cent.
The next generation cooling technology was recently installed in GlobalConnect’s data centre in Copenhagen, and will be rolled out to all remaining data centres based on customer demand.
“As data consumption keeps soaring across society, so does the hard-working servers that enable what we refer to as ‘the cloud’. With more digital products and services becoming available, data centres are now an integrated core function of our modern society. To handle the increasing amount of data stored in the cloud, technology must find ways to process more data with increased speed as well as in an energy efficient way, especially in times of energy shortage”, said Luke Davies, managing director of data centres, GlobalConnect Group.
The new submerged cooling technology is said to be able to reduce data centres’ power consumption dramatically. By submerging servers in a specially developed cooling liquid, the cooling power consumption is reduced by up to 90 per cent compared to conventional air cooling. The servers are also able to operate at a higher temperature, making it possible to perform at 25 per cent higher efficiency rate without the risk of overheating. This makes the new technology particularly suitable for companies with high-capacity needs, such as global tech companies.
“Submerged cooling is a real game changer that will change the market in the coming years, and we already see a high interest from our customer base. The innovative technology is a key element in achieving GlobalConnect’s ambitious climate goals, while helping our customers achieve their own green goals,” continued Davies.
The submerged cooling technology requires only one fifth of the space compared to traditional air-cooling technology, meaning that the four cooling tanks currently installed at GlobalConnect’s data centre contains computing power equivalent to roughly 120 square metres data of centre space with air cooling.
As an added advantage, being able to run servers at higher temperatures makes it simpler to connect excess heat to local district heating operations. The excess heat from GlobalConnect’s data centre in Copenhagen will be connected to the nearby municipality’s district heating in 2023.
It has taken GlobalConnect and submerged cooling technology provider GRC 14 months to develop a new version of existing submerged cooling technology that lives up to the redundancy requirements of colocation data centres. For now, the new technology has been installed in GlobalConnect’s largest Danish data centre. Based on customer demand, GlobalConnect’s 16 additional ISO27001 certified data centres throughout the Nordics and Germany will offer customers submerged cooling as an option in the coming years.
