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In datacenters, you're mostly limited by the power (and thus cooling). Most commercial DCs only let you use up to about 10kW per rack. For standard 40U racks it
by gfv 3y ago
In datacenters, you're mostly limited by the power (and thus cooling). Most commercial DCs only let you use up to about 10kW per rack. For standard 40U racks it's just 250W/RU, give or take.
There are niche expensive datacenters with higher power density, but as it stands, exotic multi-kW hardware at scale makes sense if you either save a ton on per-node licensing, or you need extreme bandwidth and/or low latency.
- hinkley 3y agoI have been told by tech writers that Google discovered that at some point electricians will refuse to route more power into a building. So even if you created a separate thermal plant, you still have issues.
- repiret 3y agoSome electricians just assume you’re on a budget. There’s always some limiting factor, and there’s always some (possibly crazy expensive) way to resolve it and get a bit more power until you run into the next limiting factor.
- kuchenbecker 3y agoYou build another datacenter rather than make the existing bigger.
- hinkley 3y agoWhy would they assume Google or Amazon for that matter, are on a budget?
- eternauta3k 3y agoReally? I imagine datacenters are not reaching powers anywhere near those of e.g. arc furnaces.
- zamfi 3y agoArc furnace: peak of about 250 MW to melt the steel [1] Datacenter: seems to cap out at around 850 MW [2] Same ballpark I guess? Probably both are limited by inexpensive power availability + other connectivity factors (road/rail, fiber). [1]: “Therefore, a 300-tonne, 300 MVA EAF will require approximately 132 MWh of energy to melt the steel, and a "power-on time" (the time that steel is being melted with an arc) of approximately 37 minutes.” via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace [2]: https://www.racksolutions.com/news/blog/how-many-servers-does-a-data-center-have/amp/ https://www.racksolutions.com/news/blog/how-many-servers-doe...
- hinkley 3y agoI knew they were putting ridiculous power into these buildings but that’s absurd. How many backup generators does that need??
- ksec 3y ago>Most commercial DCs only let you use up to about 10kW per rack. I think that was the case in 2020; >By 2020, that was up to 8–10 kW per rack. Note, though, that two-thirds of U.S. data centers surveyed said that they were already experiencing peak demands in the 16–20 kW per rack range. The latest numbers from 2022 show 10% of data centers reporting rack densities of 20–29 kW per rack, 7% at 30–39 kW per rack, 3% at 40–49 kW per rack and 5% at 50 kW or greater. We dont have 2023 numbers and we are coming to 2024. But it is clear that demands for high power density is growing. ( And hopefully at a much faster pace )