On November 10, 2022, I saw that Sugon released its first liquid-cooled storage, targeting data centers below PUE1.1. Under the development trend of "dual carbon", focusing on the innovation of liquid-cooled storage and liquid-cooled servers, Sugon will lead the industry in the sustainable development of green data centers.
Under the general trend of double carbon, green storage is about to emerge
The demand for green development of data centers has become particularly prominent in recent years.
From the perspective of policy analysis, the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology put forward higher requirements for the green and low-carbon development of data centers. Below 1.3, in severe cold and cold regions strive to reduce to below 1.25.
Global Storage Observation analysis pointed out that in recent years, as the PUE value has become more stringent, it has also driven the green computing trend of "server + liquid cooling". Recently, a study by the China Data Center Energy Conservation Committee showed that the power consumption generated by the IT equipment system in the data center accounts for about 45% of the total power consumption of the data center. Among them, the server system accounts for about 50%, and the storage system accounts for about 35%. As one of the three major components of the data center, storage is also urgently moving towards "greening". Therefore, liquid-cooled storage has become the focus of the current industry.
Zhang Xinfeng, deputy general manager of Sugon's storage business department, pointed out that with the maturity of liquid cooling computing technology and the popularization of applications, in the context of the gradual commercialization of liquid cooling, users hope to further expand liquid cooling technology to storage systems. The demand for liquid-cooled storage is increasingly urgent, and the one-stack liquid-cooled solution for storage and computing will become a better choice for medium and large-scale green data centers in the future, and it is also a key part of realizing the "deep green" of data centers. It can be seen that the industry value of green storage will also be brought into play under the double carbon trend.
Three major challenges affect the development of liquid cooling storage
Prior to this, the analysis data released by CCID Consulting showed that by 2025, the market size of my country's liquid-cooled data centers will exceed 120 billion yuan. Compared with the traditional air-cooled system, the current liquid-cooled system saves about 30%-50% in power consumption than the air-cooled system. You should know that in traditional data centers, the cooling system accounts for more than 40% of the overall energy consumption of the data center. It can be seen that the use of liquid cooling systems in data centers can effectively reduce energy consumption, improve energy utilization efficiency, and reduce PUE values and power costs.
However, although the market demand is prominent and liquid cooling technology is developing rapidly, in the field of liquid cooling storage, it is not completely equivalent to the situation of liquid cooling servers. From the perspective of technology, ecology, and business, there are currently three major challenges in the development of liquid-cooled storage.
One is the technical threshold. As the leader of liquid cooling technology, Sugon began to explore technology in 2001, and successively conquered the core technologies of cold plate type and immersion phase change liquid cooling. Inheriting the advantages of Sugon's liquid cooling technology for more than 20 years, Sugon launched the industry's first high-density liquid-cooled storage node, which skillfully combines the cold plate liquid cooling solution with higher heat exchange efficiency with storage technology, significantly reducing memory, HDD and other key storage components. The working temperature greatly reduces the heat dissipation power. Compared with air cooling, the overall performance of the liquid cooling storage system is improved by more than 20%.
Especially worth mentioning is the technical highlight. When designing the cold-plate liquid-cooling heat dissipation solution, Sugon carried out structural processing according to the heat dissipation characteristics of the mechanical hard disk to avoid excessive local temperature. When designing the hardware, ensure that the contact area between the hard disk box and the liquid-cooled box meets the heat dissipation requirements of the mechanical hard disk, and the plugging and unplugging of the hard disk will not bring about changes in the heat dissipation contact surface. After adding the liquid cooling circulation system, the independent hot swap of the hard disk can still be maintained, ensuring the portability of storage system maintenance.
The second is the ecological threshold. The innovation of storage products is often not just driven by a certain technological innovation, but the ability of the overall ecology from hardware to software to truly realize the value increase of storage products. Sugon has a complete ecosystem from liquid-cooled supporting infrastructure, liquid-cooled servers, storage hardware design, and software system development. It has the ability to quickly customize products and overall solutions, ensuring deep compatibility between software and hardware, simplified deployment, and efficient operation and maintenance.
For storage hardware, the use of cold plate liquid cooling technology solutions will facilitate daily maintenance for users. At the same time, ParaStor liquid-cooled storage is integrated into the intelligent operation and maintenance system, which can realize automatic detection of liquid leakage and automatic alarm. In addition, in terms of refrigerant medium selection, Sugon provides a variety of options such as deionized water and fluorinated liquid, allowing data center users to choose according to actual conditions as much as possible, and also facilitating their daily technical operation and maintenance.
The third is the business threshold. Most of the application of liquid cooling technology is focused on medium and large-scale application scenarios. For relevant suppliers, there is no long-term industry implementation practice, and large-scale deployment cannot be formed. It is bound to be difficult to bring out the industry value of liquid cooling technology. . It can be seen that for the relevant suppliers of liquid cooling storage, they also need to have a certain scale of business implementation capabilities. As an important supplier of domestic core information infrastructure, Sugon has been widely serving data centers of various industries and sizes for a long time. It not only has the foundation for large-scale commercialization of liquid cooling technology, but also has the soil for rapid technological iteration and innovation.
Although there are three obvious challenges in terms of technology, ecology, and business scale, with the emergence of Sugon's ParaStor liquid-cooled storage system, it is bound to drive a wave of "green storage" in the storage industry. The increased attention to "storage" will further promote the overall development of liquid-cooled storage technology.
Summary: The general trend, liquid-cooled green storage leads the future
As a professional manufacturer that has been working in the field of data storage and computing for decades, based on the development goal of environmental protection and energy saving, Sugon is committed to creating storage products with lower energy consumption, realizing innovation in hardware and software construction, liquid cooling storage and computing The server forms a "storage and calculation one-stack" liquid cooling solution, which can meet the flexibility and convenience of user deployment, and create a liquid cooling data center that meets various application scenarios.
Facing the dual-carbon development, "deep greening" of data centers has become an inevitable trend. There is no minimum PUE value, only lower. How to achieve a lower PUE value? Among them, liquid-cooled storage and liquid-cooled servers form a good pair of CPs, which deserves attention. For this reason, focusing on the unified planning, design and sharing of data center infrastructure, and combining Sugon liquid-cooled storage with liquid-cooled servers to form a "storage-computing one-stack" liquid-cooling solution has important industry development significance.
(by Aming)
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[Global Storage Observation｜Technology Explanation｜Aming Observation] Focus on the analysis of technology companies, use data to speak, and show you how to understand technology. This article and the author's reply only represent personal opinions and do not constitute any investment advice.