HP Storage Tech Day: Page 2 of 2

As you would expect for a green data center, HP has kept the cold aisles at 72 degrees and used hot aisle containment to keep hot air from recirculating back into server inputs. While one would assume that free air cooling would be a good solution high in the Rockies, it turns out that the dry air year-round makes evaporative cooling a better bet. When we were there, the outside temperature was about 50 degrees and the chillers weren't needed at all.

HP also manages to avoid the 10% to 30% overhead of power conditioning equipment like UPSes. Since this is a lab, not a production data center, the HP folks have made the decision that the projected outage costs of downtime don't justify the additional cost of backup power. They've even built cool vented tiles for their raised floor that have remotely controlled motorized dampers. When the computer that monitors the whole place, through a 3D interface that frankly gave me a momentary CA Unicenter flashback, sees a hot spot, it can open the dampers further--a better solution than just adding more vented tiles and running the blowers faster to move air everywhere.

HP's tiles are a project of HP Labs and not commercially available. The closest I've managed to come is Tate's SmartAire.

Our host, Calvin Zito, made a video of a previous lab tour that's on YouTube.

While HP is a client of DeepStorage.net, the trip was not conditioned on my blogging, tweeting or otherwise mentioning Tech Day. HP paid all my expenses for Tech Day, including airfare, hotel and meals.