SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Dell announced today a partnership with Emerson Network Power to improve data center cooling efficiency while reducing the expense in keeping computers cooled.
The two companies will combine their sales forces to promote Emerson’s XD cooling systems in Dell data center deployments. Emerson’s Liebert subsidiary makes the XD line of rack cooling systems.
The announcement also included a joint assessment service. Dell and Emerson will examine a company’s data center to assess heating and cooling conditions to provide optimal air flow and increase cooling efficiency. Dell’s servers will also be certified for Emerson’s cooling products.
The Dell Energy Smart servers use AMD’s High Efficiency processors, which consume less power than a typical server processor. “We’re bringing the complete solution to customers,” said David Lord, a spokesman for Dell .
The combination of the Dell’s PowerEdge Energy Smart servers with Liebert XD cooling technology means either a 42 percent power savings or up to 80 percent improvement in systems performance increase, or some trade-off between the two.
Liebert systems look just like a rack-mounted computer and sit next to them in the data center. That’s the whole idea. “The main thing is we’ve got the cooling near the load,” said Fred Stack, vice president of marketing for Liebert at a press conference. “The closer we can get to it, the more efficient it can be.”
The Liebert system functions much like a car radiator. The coolant is delivered directly to the cooling coils on the server or server cabinet through a network of hoses. The liquid coolant absorbs the heat, becoming a gas, where it is pumped into a unit that cools it to a liquid form again. Liebert originally used Freon, but to comply with environmental laws, it is switching to a newer type of refrigerant.
The issue of cooling is becoming a greater problem for CIOs and data center operators because in many cases, data centers can’t expand, said Randy Allen, vice president of the server and workstation division at AMD . They are either unable to expand physically, or are being limited in how much power they can consume.
Charles King, president of research firm Pund-IT, said the partnership was an interesting one. “This is an opportunity for Dell to enter the market for cooling and Emerson can help with minimal market risk to both sides, and they can make the move without undue risk on their parts,” he told internetnews.com.
A new ultra-mobile Latitude
Separately, Dell today introduced two new notebooks, the ultra-mobile Latitude D430 notebook and the Dell Precision M4300 mobile workstation. Both meet the Energy Star 4.0 standard. Dell is also offering a solid state drive as an option.
The solid state drives are part of the RoadReady quality initiative, featuring magnesium alloy construction and hard drive protection against jarring or dropping. They also improve performance by 23 percent and reduce boot time by 34 percent.
The 12-inch widescreen Latitude D430 weighs just three pounds, comes with an Intel 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, up to 2GB of memory, 802.11n wireless networking, and an 80GB solid state drives. The Precision M4300 is a more powerful laptop, with 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB of memory, a 15.4-inch screen, wireless networking and a 250GB hard drive.
Both are available now, with a starting price of $1,509 for the Latitude D430 and $1,750 for the M4300.
