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PRIMERGY Feature Story - Cool and Efficient

PRIMERGY servers : Cool and Efficient

There are many approaches you can consider when aiming for a greener IT environment. From an efficient server management perspective there are several.

One approach is to cut energy consumption by reducing the number of physical servers. This can be done by decreasing the number of physical processors and implementing higher performance processors in your physical servers. Then you can increase the number of logical servers using virtualization technology. This will make your business environment more energy efficient while maintaining the same levels of performance.　Another approach is to simply keep the power consumption of each individual server down as low as possible.

To reduce server energy consumption to a minimum, PRIMERGY has implemented a range of featured solutions.

To find out more about PRIMERGY's energy efficiency technologies, please click the links below.

Consolidate servers by virtualization
Reduce the energy consumed by the server itself
Cool your servers efficiently
Manage airflow in the data center
Visualize your server's power consumption
Fujitsu's Green know-how contributes to a greener IT environment

Consolidate servers by virtualization

Exclusive setup of servers, for web or mail processing, has tended to introduce inefficiencies in the usage ratios of processor resources and power consumption. Use of PRIMERGY and virtualization technology is a solution that can solve this issue. Multiple physical servers can be consolidated onto just one PRIMERGY blade server. SAN (storage area network) boot solutions combining SAN and virtualization technology also further boost reliability. Typically an operational server needs a spare server for failover. But with virtualization and SAN boot, you can use a single spare server to cover the failover requirements of multiple servers.

Not only does server consolidation by virtualization more efficiently utilize system resources, it improves scalability. It also saves the energy previously use by servers which are no longer required. This in turn cuts down on the cost and energy consumption of air conditioning, as server installation space is also reduced.

Virtualization delivers significant energy and cooling cost savings to your enterprise through server consolidation. With blade servers, such server consolidation is accomplished in the most power and cost efficient manner.

Reduce the energy consumed by the server itself

PRIMERGY servers provide you with the latest processors, high performance and low power consumption. Choosing low voltage processors is an effective way to reduce power consumption. Compact 2.5 inch format hard disk drives (HDD) also provide an important contribution, and implementing larger memory modules for example 2x 2GB instead of 4x 1GB, is more energy efficient as well.

PRIMERGY uses DC-DC conversion. Streamlined power supply units and voltage regulator modules that eliminate conversion losses. It is generally understood that AC (alternate current) to DC (direct current) conversion loss is around 30%. Highly efficient but relatively expensive power supply units were typically only used in high-end servers. PRIMERGY servers now adopt these highly-efficient power supply units even in 2-Way midrange rack mount models (e.g. RX300 S4). Current conversion efficiency has been improved from around 70 percent to 80-85 percent, and is soon expected to be enhanced further to 89 percent.

Cool your servers efficiently

PRIMERGY servers have advanced heat management technology (cooling technology). They achieve the superior energy saving to high performance ratios needed by Green IT aware enterprises. Use of highly efficient power supply units and development technology contributes to cooling efficiency and power savings.

Optimized fan rotation control, that constantly monitors environmental temperatures and main component heat output, enables fans to finely adjust their rotation frequency and reduce power consumption. PRIMERGY RX300 S4 incorporates a specially designed plastic baffle over the motherboard to ensure perfect air flow. It directs cool air more efficiently over heat generating components and away from heat sensitive items. This enhances cooling efficiency and reduces power consumption.

Use of heat pipes further improves cooling over liquid or air cooling methods. Previously processor heat was transmitted via a heat sink and then dispersed by a processor fan. This enabled the cabinet fan to then expel this exhaust heat from the rear of the server. PRIMERGY tower servers now use a "heat pipe" (figure 1.). This has a capillary structure that ensures the heat is transmitted within a very narrow and limited space. Such cooling removes the need for a processor fan, achieving further energy savings.

"Straight-through cooling " (figure 2.) is another cooling efficiency enhancement. By careful alignment of all heat generating components, energy savings and lower noise levels are achieved as fan use is further reduced.

As heat is the most important issue in blade server design, the superior cooling of BX620 avoids channeling hot air across hard disk drives or excessive rotation of fans. The cool air intake first flows over the HDDs and then over the processors. (figure 3.)

Manage heat dissipation in the data center

The efficient air intake and heat exhaust design of the PRIMERGY blade chassis is also significant. This prevents excessive amounts of hot exhaust air being drawn into cold aisles. This avoids hot exhaust air flowing across data center cabinets causing servers to take in warm instead of cold air which leads to server overheating and breakdown.

More efficient heat exhaust design has a less negative impact on data center air flow. PRIMERGY with its high heat dissipation efficiency, makes kitchen ventilation-like or jet engine-like fans, adopted by competitors, unnecessary. This is another product of ideal component alignment and air-intake efficiency.

Visualize and manage your servers' power consumption

Visualization of power use is a PRIMERGY unique technology. You can monitor and control on-site power consumption through server management software and on-board management processors. The controller interface is positioned between the power unit and onboard remote management controller (iRMC) and provides accurate power consumption data..

Collected data is recorded to allow you to display energy consumption trends and their relation to server workload conditions. This is possible for specific time periods, a day, a year, etc. It also allows you to schedule the best performance mode for processing during the day and a minimum power setting mode for nighttime batch.

Future plans include comprehensive evaluation of power use conditions collected by this technology, together with temperature distribution within the data center and air conditioning power consumption. The aim is to automatically optimize CPU control in accordance with the server workload conditions. This will lead to energy efficiency throughout the data center or office environments where servers are placed.

Collaboration with virtualization technology is planned so that resource use can be reduced by centralizing operations on a smaller number of servers. This would allow reductions in number of physical servers used in lower workload periods, like overnight. In addition even aggressive power savings are achievable by controlling the air conditioning to focus only on cooling those servers that are in operation.

Fujitsu's Green know-how contributes to a greener IT environment

All the energy saving technologies implemented with PRIMERGY servers and the solutions that take energy efficiency to even more competitive levels are a feature of Fujitsu's "Green Policy Innovation". Incorporated through documented internal practices and processes "Green Policy Innovation" is aimed at helping you with your own environmental activities.

Fujitsu leverages the know-how obtained from many years of developing and manufacturing equipment and providing IT infrastructure solutions. For example, Fujitsu operates over 50 data centers in Japan alone. Those facilities consume so much energy that the power consumption of the IT hardware and the cooling facilities cannot be ignored. Therefore, by designing for improved cooling efficiency of our own facilities, we have achieved immense energy savings across all data centers. For example, PRIMERGY BX620 was designed for that purpose and the same benefits can now be passed on to you.

Our broad server product line-up supports the multiple needs of both data centers and office environments. In office environments, employees work in close proximity to servers, so power consumption, noise levels, and installation space are central in our reduction designs. PRIMERGY TX120 and other PRIMERGY tower servers are designed to provide a perfect fit for such environments.