Getting Started on a Liquid Immersion Cooling Journey

We conclude our article series on critical liquid cooling design and infrastructure updates and why liquid immersion cooling will save the data center. This week, we’ll outline steps for getting started on your liquid immersion cooling journey.

Before you jump on the liquid immersion cooling bandwagon, it’s essential to understand your use cases and where liquid immersion cooling can make a powerful impact. Remember, depending on the component and the solution, a liquid can remove only a portion of the heat. That said, not all equipment will or should be liquid-cooled.

The interesting part is that, as mentioned earlier, liquid immersion cooling can create an all-encompassing solution where every component in your design is adequately cooled. So, designing around your use case is critical.

But how do you really know if you’re immersion-ready? Check out this five-step checklist.

How to become immersion-ready

Understand Your Workload and Use Case: The first step in implementing an immersion cooling system is understanding your data center’s specific needs. This includes evaluating the types of workloads your data center supports, the computational power required, and the heat generated by these workloads. By understanding these factors, you can determine whether immersion cooling is the right solution for your data center.
Calculate the Workloads, BTU, and Number of Nodes: Once you clearly understand your workload requirements, the next step is to calculate your servers’ heat output (BTU) and power consumption. This will help determine how many physical nodes can be accommodated in the immersion tank. For example, a 50U rack can hold up to 100 servers with a power draw of up to 150kW, depending on the cooling distribution units (CDUs) used.
Architectural Review: Before implementing an immersion cooling system, it is essential to conduct an architectural review of your data center. This includes evaluating the facility’s physical layout, the infrastructure in place, and any modifications that may be necessary to support the new cooling system. Owning the building provides more flexibility in making these architectural changes, which can simplify the implementation process.
Understand the TCO and Savings: Implementing an immersion cooling system requires a significant investment, but the long-term benefits can outweigh the initial costs. To understand the full financial impact of the system, it is important to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO), including both CAPEX and OPEX. Reducing energy consumption, lower cooling costs, and increased system longevity can lead to significant savings over time.
Select the Right Partner: Working with an experienced and reliable partner is critical to the success of an immersion cooling implementation. The right partner can provide the expertise and support needed to ensure a smooth and successful implementation. Hypertec, for example, offers a range of immersion-born servers and comprehensive support services, making them an ideal partner for data centers looking to adopt immersion cooling.

Finally, it’s less of a question of which is better and more of how to use liquid and air effectively. Liquid and air cooling will not be mutually exclusive when designing a good solution. This means working with the right partners to design your ecosystem will be critical. When it comes to liquid immersion cooling, this is a technology you should learn more about, as long as you have the proper use case.

Right questions to ask

As you begin the process of implementing an immersion cooling system, it is important to ask the right questions to ensure the system meets your needs:

What are the specific cooling requirements of my workloads?
How scalable is the immersion cooling solution?
What are the long-term benefits of energy savings and environmental impact?
How will the solution integrate with my existing infrastructure?
What are the maintenance and operational requirements?

Working with immersion cooling leaders

As data centers increasingly adopt immersion cooling to address the challenges of modern workloads, selecting the right partner is crucial. Hypertec has established itself as a leader in this field, offering 360° solutions that are not only innovative but also specifically designed to meet the unique needs of today’s data centers.

How Hypertec Immersion Cooling is Different. What sets Hypertec apart is its focus on immersion-born systems—servers specifically designed for immersion cooling environments. We mentioned this earlier and discussed specific benefits between immersion-ready and immersion-born. These systems feature a unique architecture that enhances cooling efficiency, such as vertical component placement and strategic fluid dynamics, which are not found in retrofitted systems. This design not only improves heat dissipation but also extends the lifespan of the components, making Hypertec systems more durable and cost-effective over time.

Where They Create Direct Benefits. Hypertec’s systems provide direct benefits by significantly reducing cooling operational expenditures (OPEX) and allowing for higher server densities. Their immersion-born systems can achieve over a 5x increase in compute density, translating into more efficient use of space and energy within the data center. Additionally, Hypertec’s systems contribute to a more sustainable and environmentally responsible operation by capturing and reusing heat.

Why Immersion-Born Systems are Powerful. Immersion-born systems’ power lies in their design, which is optimized for the specific challenges of immersion cooling. These systems eliminate the need for retrofitting, reducing potential points of failure and increasing overall efficiency. By leveraging immersion-born designs, data centers can achieve higher performance with lower energy consumption, all while maintaining the reliability needed for critical operations.

Final thoughts and a look to the future

The demands on data centers will only increase as AI and HPC applications grow. Liquid immersion cooling, particularly immersion cooling, is no longer a luxury but a necessity for data centers looking to stay competitive and meet their customers’ needs. Hypertec’s immersion-born servers and advanced cooling technologies provide a reliable and efficient solution for data centers transitioning to liquid immersion cooling.

By adopting immersion cooling, data centers can achieve higher densities, lower energy consumption, and improved system performance, all while reducing their environmental impact. As the industry evolves, adopting liquid immersion cooling will be critical to maintaining performance, reliability, and sustainability of data centers.

The data center landscape will continue to evolve rapidly, driven by the increasing demands of AI and HPC applications. Adopting liquid immersion cooling will play a pivotal role in enabling data centers to meet these performance and environmental sustainability demands. Hypertec’s commitment to innovation ensures that its solutions remain at the forefront of this evolution, providing the tools and support needed to lead in the new era of data center operations.

As the industry moves towards more efficient and sustainable solutions, immersion cooling will become more critical. Data centers that embrace this technology will be better positioned to meet future challenges and continue to deliver the high levels of performance and reliability that their customers expect.

Download the full report, Liquid Immersion Cooling Will Save the Data Center: Critical Design and Infrastructure Updates, featuring Hypertec, for exclusive content, including details on why immersion-born is better than immersion-ready.