Along with our partner, Schneider Electric, Avnet has been focusing on how to operationalize and mass produce liquid-cooled servers. Our role is to integrate server technology with liquid cooling and related infrastructure, and to support the solutions in the field for OEMs. Schneider introduced Avnet to two organizations with proprietary liquid cooling technologies: Iceotope and Chilldyne.
- Iceotope: We are working with Iceotope to help bring to market their Precision Cooling Solution on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Lenovo platforms. Iceotope’s solution takes air-cooled servers and converts them to liquid-cooled servers by immersing CPU and other critical components in a small amount of dielectric fluid in a sealed chassis design.
- Chilldyne: We are also working with Dell and Chilldyne, which developed a Direct-to-Chip Negative Pressure Liquid Cooling solution. Intel has been working closely with Avnet by providing benchmarking assistance, joint customer engagement, trade show collaboration and thermal engineering expertise, among other activities. Chilldyne’s solution converts air cooled servers by adding proprietary cold plates and related negative pressure equipment.
Addressing the challenges
Avnet’s objective is to become the mass production and service/support arm of our OEM partners to take liquid cooling out of the lab and into the market. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the consumption of natural resources by data center operations. We are open to engaging with all companies that share our vision and goal to bring liquid cooling to market as soon as possible.
Avnet’s engineering organization has been working with IP providers to provide scale and production recommendations. We are assisting by regionalizing supply chains and engaging with industry certification organizations (UL FCC, CE). Our Services organization is creating programs for liquid cooling end-to-end support (replacement parts programs, entitlement management, call center support, forward stocking locations, technician and parts dispatch, and on-site support).
Avnet company Witekio is developing an out-of-band management (OOBM) solution with one of our partners to help enable the monitoring and management of liquid cooled servers similar to the management of air-cooled servers. This is key to deploying servers at the edge.
Working with Digital Realty, Avnet is planning to leverage its Virtual Platform program to establish a liquid-cooling test bed at Digital Realty’s Advanced Technology Lab in Ashburn, Virginia. Learn more about Avnet Virtual Platforms.