Vertiv Debuts Liebert XDU With Drop-In Liquid Cooling for Data Centers

Vertiv is making it easier for customers to transition from air-cooled data centers to liquid cooling with the introduction of the Liebert XDU, a 60kW liquid-to-air cooling distribution unit. The new offering arrives as a growing number of data center users struggle to manage high-density workloads and the associated thermal challenges.

Vertiv said the development of the Liebert XDU was motivated by the growing number of high-performance computing applications such as data analytics and machine learning, which are pushing rack densities and temperatures beyond the limits of most air-cooled solutions. The Liebert XDU enables users to deploy liquid-cooled server applications into any data center environment. The system is available currently in North America.

“High performance computing applications are growing, and they present new thermal management challenges for our customers,” said John Schneider, senior vice president, thermal management at Vertiv. “Colocation providers who have relied on air cooling for their facilities are now hosting clients with applications with higher power processors that require liquid cooling. With the Vertiv Liebert XDU, our customers can meet that demand without expensive retrofits or disruption to their existing operations.”

The XDU is an expansion of the Liebert XD line of refrigerant-based cooling solutions, which previously offered air cooling modules for hot aisle/cold aisle data center designs. The Liebert XDU can “drop in” to an existing row, and circulates water through liquid-cooled server racks, rejecting the heat from the returning warm water into the data center’s hot aisle. It uses a closed water loop and requires no new plumbing, making the Liebert XDU an easy retrofit in existing data centers. The compact system can also be placed along the room’s perimeter.

“A liquid cooling solution such as the Liebert XDU is a compelling option because it delivers the advantages and efficiencies of liquid cooling without a complete data center retrofit,” said Jennifer Cooke, research director, cloud to edge data center trends for IDC.

This retrofit capability is attractive to companies with on-premises data centers, as it supports equipment refreshes to add more powerful servers. Colocation providers could benefit from the ability to more easily create high-density water-cooled zones within an air-cooled facility.

Vertiv says it developed the Liebert XDU in close consultation with data center operators and server manufacturers, including Lenovo, which demonstrated the use of the XDU with its Neptune water-cooled server at its booth at the recent SC19 supercomputing conference.