ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • 47 Rittal Ireland example of the power supply, the server in the rack is connected to the central inlets and outlets of the water circuit via standardised connections at the manifold. Power is supplied via the rack’s standardised DC busbar. Functional units of the CDU such as the central controller unit and several coolant circulation units (CCUs) are completely modular and can be easily slid into the rack. This concept offers a major benefit in terms of service: Components such as controller, sensors, filters and the pump units of the In-Row solution can be maintained during operation and easily replaced via "hot swap". The structure is designed in such a way that the modules can be moved in a similar way to the usual handling of servers. What will become the next best practice? And how? “We are convinced that the powerful liquid-to-liquid solution will be a crowd puller at the 2024 OCP Summit. This kind of set-up will be used mainly by hyperscalers and other operators of large data centres”, Platzhoff explains: “The approaches taken by international hyperscalers after extensive testing will quite probably set the standards in the medium term. But the agile colocation sector cannot wait so long.” Most colocators are highly customerfocused and want to rapidly offer their customers good conditions for AI and HPC as well. Several of them are also planning data centres with liquid-to-liquid solutions. Rittal will also offer alternatives without the need for a water connection. The liquid-toair versions cool the processors with water but dissipate the heat into the air through the rear door of the rack or a side cooler. They do not achieve the same cooling output and efficiency as liquid-to-liquid solutions, but they can be deployed more quickly in data centres without a water connection. Thus, they enable data centre operators to perform their tests with less effort and investment or to create individual ‘HPC islands’ in air-cooled data centres for their users. These versions will soon be available to customers worldwide, bringing direct liquid cooling to data centres as an enabling technology for AI. www.rittal.ie Contact sales@rittal.ie Lars Platzhoff, Head of Rittal’s Business Unit Cooling Solutions.
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