Schneider Electric releases its initial integrated rack with immersed, liquid-cooled IT for data centers

Schneider Electric, vendor of digital transformation of energy management and automation, with Avnet and Iceotope, announces creation of commercially-available integrated rack with chassis-based, immersive liquid cooling. Optimized for compute-intensive applications, the solution combines a high-powered GPU server with Iceotope’s liquid cooling technology to increase energy efficiency. 

Avnet integrates the liquid-cooled server with Schneider Electric’s NetShelter liquid-cooled enclosure system for simple deployment into data centers or edge computing environments. The system is EcoStruxure Ready since the solution is available with next generation data center management software, EcoStruxure IT Expert and our digital service EcoStruxure Asset Advisor. 

This liquid-cooled solution is ideal for applications such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning algorithm training development, where high compute demands more energy use. In a recent report published by Gartner, liquid cooling was identified as a technology to watch. 

Analyst Henrique Cecci advised data center operators “maximize cooling energy efficiencies by employing modern liquid cooling solutions.” Liquid cooling offers greater efficiency, lower operating costs, smaller footprint, increased reliability, and nearly silent operation despite the high-power density of the GPUs. 

Avnet, Iceotope and Schneider Electric plan to expand the offering as demand grows by welcoming other server OEMs into the partnership. 

“Schneider Electric is committed to making data centers more sustainable and liquid cooling is a very compelling approach,” said Kevin Brown, CTO and SVP of Innovation, Secure Power, Schneider Electric, who is presenting on liquid cooling at the Gartner conference. “This latest development marks a significant step toward industrializing chassis-based immersion solutions which offer the efficiency and effectiveness of tanks based solutions while providing the compatibility and serviceability of more traditional, ‘direct-to-chip’ liquid-cooling designs. Given the growth of compute-intensive applications, we believe this approach is very promising.”

“As a leading global technology solutions provider, Avnet has always excelled at adapting to changing markets, trends, and technologies,” said Scott MacDonald, global president, Avnet Integrated. “We do well at this by partnering with the world’s best technology designers and hardware manufacturers. In this case, we’re partnering with liquid cooling-specialist, Iceotope, and global infrastructure giant, Schneider Electric, to make the best possible liquid cooling solutions for our customers. We’re excited to integrate, fulfill, and support this solution that smartly addresses customer cooling challenges around rising chip densities, harsh IT environments, rising energy costs, water use restrictions, and space constraints.”

“Iceotope is thrilled to be making its innovative chassis-level, immersive liquid cooling technology available to the general market,” said David Craig, CEO of Iceotope. “We offer the only liquid cooling tech that scales easily from edge computing devices to large server farms in the cloud. And compared to direct-to-chip liquid cooling systems, our approach is more efficient, more reliable, saves more space, eliminates fans, and when deployed across the data center, it lowers cost.”

Schneider Electric brings out its initial integrated rack with immersed, liquid-cooled IT for data centers

Schneider Electric, alongwith Avnet and Iceotope, announced on Monday  creation its commercially-available integrated rack with chassis-based, immersive liquid cooling. Optimized for compute-intensive applications, the solution combines a high-powered GPU server with Iceotope's liquid cooling technology to increase energy efficiency. 

Avnet integrates the liquid-cooled server with Schneider Electric's NetShelter liquid-cooled enclosure system for simple deployment into data centers or edge computing environments. The system is EcoStruxure Ready since the solution is available with next generation data center management software, EcoStruxure IT Expert, and digital service EcoStruxure Asset Advisor. 

This liquid-cooled solution is ideal for applications such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning algorithm training development, where high compute demands more energy use. In a recent report published by Gartner, liquid cooling was identified as a technology to watch. 

The parallel-processing power of Graphical Processing Units, known as GPUs, makes them efficient processor for a growing number of applications including AI, big data analytics, data mining, and more. The chips are increasingly power dense with thermal design power ratings reaching 400 watts or more. 

This makes traditional data center air-cooled architectures impractical, or costly and less efficient than liquid-cooled approaches where the server is partially submerged in a dielectric fluid. 

Liquid cooling delivers efficiency removing the need for air conditioning, while offering the same processing power with less energy. It is also silent as it does not include industrial drone from fans and pumps; delivers resilience as all components are in a sealed module that resists dust and smoke; and comes in a compact size to offer smaller and more flexible footprint.

Analyst Henrique Cecci advised data center operators "maximize cooling energy efficiencies by employing modern liquid cooling solutions1." Liquid cooling offers greater efficiency, lower operating costs, smaller footprint, increased reliability, and nearly silent operation despite the high-power density of the GPUs. Avnet, Iceotope, and Schneider Electric plan to expand the offering as demand grows by welcoming other server OEMs into the partnership. 

"Schneider Electric is committed to making data centers more sustainable and liquid cooling is a very compelling approach," said Kevin Brown, CTO and SVP of Innovation, Secure Power, Schneider Electric, who is presenting on liquid cooling at the Gartner conference. "This latest development marks a significant step toward industrializing chassis-based immersion solutions which offer the efficiency and effectiveness of tanks based solutions while providing the compatibility and serviceability of more traditional, 'direct-to-chip' liquid-cooling designs.  Given the growth of compute-intensive applications, we believe this approach is very promising."

StorMagic introduces Lightweight “Edge in a Box,” its redundant hyperconverged offering to simplify edge computing

StorMagic announced availability of its all-inclusive “Edge in a Box” solution, optimized to run edge or small data center onsite applications with 100 percent uptime. “Edge in a Box” includes Schneider Electric’s innovative 6U Wall Mount EcoStruxure Micro Data Center, any two x86 servers and StorMagic SvSAN software for less than $12,000. 

Enterprise customers with hundreds or thousands of sites as well as SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) with less than five sites can begin processing, managing and storing data in minutes, on the leanest, most lightweight solution on the market.

“Edge in a Box” is simple to install and manage without requiring onsite IT staff, making it ideal for both edge computing sites and SMBs. The solution can be tailored to meet exact customer requirements and includes Schneider Electric’s 6U Wall Mount EcoStruxure Micro Data Center composed of a unique wall-mountable low-profile enclosure, APC Smart-UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and customizable physical security, remote management and servicing options.

The solution supports servers from manufacturers like Dell, HPE and Lenovo with any combination of disk drive, memory and processor.

Customers can choose from VMware, Microsoft or open-source KVM.

SvSAN provides storage virtualization, high availability and a lightweight remote witness that can manage up to 1,000 edge sites.

“StorMagic’s ‘Edge in a Box’ is designed for edge computing environments not optimized for IT systems, and leverages Schneider Electric’s self-contained, secure, wall-mountable EcoStruxure Micro Data Center for hyperconverged architectures,” said Jim Simonelli, SVP emerging businesses, secure power division, Schneider Electric. “Industries such as retail, manufacturing and SLED are all looking for ways to lower the cost of IT at smaller locations, deploy standardized, pre-integrated systems faster while still ensuring resiliency. ‘Edge in a Box’ with our EcoStruxure Micro Data Center complete with remote management is an ideal solution to meet these requirements.”

“StorMagic’s ‘Edge in a Box’ is a very lightweight, budget-friendly offering that allows any edge site or SMB to deploy a simple IT solution optimized for fast onsite integration,” said Bruce Kornfeld, CMO and GM-Americas, StorMagic. “SvSAN is compatible with any x86 server, with any configuration and the leading hypervisors, so customers have the ultimate flexibilty to deploy only what they need, keeping costs to a bare minimum.”

StorMagic’s “Edge in a Box” is currently available with pricing starting below US$12,000. It is available from a global network of joint StorMagic and Schneider Electric channel partners.