Your landlord should offer on-prem cloud, suggests immersed datacenter upstart
- Reference: 1702877285
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/12/18/resetdata_basement_datacenters/
- Source link:
Aspiring cloud operator ResetData offers datacenter pods it's named Hyperdrives that use liquid immersion to reduce energy consumption and heat output. The startup modifies Dell servers to operate while immersed – and as it's a partner of the hardware giant is able to retain the manufacturer's warranty. Like others of its ilk, ResetData can [1]capture waste heat and use it to [2]warm water that can be piped into an office building's taps.
One wrinkle with immersion tech is that it's obviously heavier than conventional datacenter racks – sometimes too heavy for easy installation in a datacenter or office building.
[3]
But ResetData co-founder Marcel Zalloua, who has spent 20 years building datacenters, knows an immersed rack is not uncomfortably heavy in a concrete-lined basement. Such spaces are also dark, cool, and close to power and plumbing.
[4]
He figures building operators could therefore consider installing an immersed datacenter to handle their own workloads, and also to rent compute and storage capacity to tenants – with a pitch that an immersed datacenter in the basement offers low latency and a good sustainability story. Liquid-cooled kit also allows denser deployments, so ResetData is able to operate the equivalent of a full-height rack in its Hyperdrives. That's enough resource to matter for many clients.
[5]BT dips toe into liquid cooling in quest for a chill network
[6]Iceotope cooks plan for liquid-cooled servers at the edge
[7]When it comes to liquid and immersion cooling, Nvidia asks: Why not both?
[8]Money starts to flow as liquid cooling gets hot in datacenters
Zalloua thinks real estate outfits that own or operate multiple buildings could even see the opportunity to offer their tenants resilience – by housing multiple immersed pods on different premises.
ResetData is also open to having building owners host its rigs so it can build a distributed and resilient cloud of its own. The Aussie upstart has created an OpenStack-based hybrid cloud platform to run in its pods, and also supports AzureStack HCI. Both offer bare metal or virtual servers. Support for other popular hybrid cloud vendors such as Red Hat, Citrix, and VMware is on the way.
If tenants are looking to handle AI workloads (and who isn't?), Hyperdrives can house Nvidia's A40 datacenter GPUs and rent them as-a-service – with or without the Omniverse 3D platform. Again, ResetData has all the necessary certs to allow immersed operation of the GPUs without voiding warranties. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/heata_offers_free_hot_water/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/cloud_startup_waste_heat_dcs/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZYAmV4wHBaL4a122C7OkxAAAAMg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZYAmV4wHBaL4a122C7OkxAAAAMg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/15/bt_tests_liquid_cooling_with/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/26/iceotope_liquidcooled_edge/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/26/nvidia_mixes_immersion_liquid_cooling/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/10/liquid_cooling_investment/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Correct me if I'm wrong
Someone else's server.
Like a regular server, but you pay more and using it is like doing brain surgery in boxing gloves.
Re: Correct me if I'm wrong
Spot-on!
I was really hoping this would be some kind of distributed computing concept, where home-owners could benefit from the waste heat by providing their basement space.
Of course there's a lot of caveats (e.g. availability, compliance), but I could see a use for that.
Instead this company is trying to sell you the novel concept of a server in your basement... And you can link it up to a server in a different basement too for redundancy!
(Also let's just hope this is not an area prone to flooding, I bet the power supply doesn't appreciate being submerged like the server does)
I think I prefer Qarnot's approach. Small, modular boilers using water cooling. Probably a lot fewer forms to fill in when they get installed.
Cunning Plan.
With whole floors of commercial property left vacant due to the recalcitrance of remote workers, employers will probably grab this opportunity to replace these uncooperative employees with on prem. AI.
A cunning plan but once the last light is turned off the question remains of who is to use all the hot water?
Re: Cunning Plan.
Nah, commercial property will just end up vacant and left to go to ruin. Then it will become a dangerous eyesore and the council will take it over (at a profit to the landlord) and make it a levelling up project that nobody asked for. Like an ice rink, a massive cinema...something that charges a fee for entry to ensure it pays for itself etc etc...the one thing it will never be used for is more, low cost, housing.
Re: Cunning Plan.
I was discussing this with a friend in the building trade the other day, and their take was that due to the wildly different regulations that cover office space and residential buildings, it would actually be cheaper in most cases to pull down unused office towers and build a whole new building than retrofit them to meet all the regulations required for them to be used as houses - or if not actually cheaper, then at least so bloody expensive and time consuming that no one wants to take the job on because there would be so little profit in it.
Correct me if I'm wrong
But wouldn't an on premise "cloud" actually be a... server(s)?
What next? The ridiculous suggestion that companies BUY their own servers? Absurd!
s\ And we've come round full circle and nobody will call servers, servers again because nobody will ever want to admit that the cloud for everything, was a stupid, stupid idea.