Unlock New MX CPU and Storage Configurations with a Thermally Optimized Air-Cooled Chassis
Download PDFFri, 03 Mar 2023 20:08:02 -0000
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As the server industry trend of increasing CPU power goes on, Dell Technologies continues to offer customers feature-rich air-cooled configurations. Dell Engineering has applied thermal innovation and machine learning to the Dell PowerEdge MX chassis to support the MX760c server sled with a broad range of 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and local storage configurations.
This Direct from Development tech note describes the new capabilities using air cooling that Dell has added to the PowerEdge MX configurations.
Introduction
The PowerEdge MX7000 is a modular chassis that allows customers to build a set of compute, storage, networking, and management to meet their specific workload needs. Industry trends of new technologies, including CPUs increasing power per server sled, continually push the capability to air-cool feature-rich configurations. Dell Engineering used machine learning combined with next-generation fans to offer high-performance 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors in an air-cooled chassis with more local storage configurations than previously available.
Dell Engineering expertise
There are 8! = 40,320 modular sled permutations in the 8-slot MX chassis. Dell Engineering conducted a Design of Experiments (DOE) to train a machine learning model that dynamically calculates the airflow cooling capacity for each of the eight slots. This technology enables Dell to maximize the shared cooling infrastructure of the MX7000, unlocking configurations that were previously not possible, and provide clear guidance to customers about how to thermally optimize their chassis. When a chassis configuration is optimized for cooling, the fans run more efficiently at lower speeds across the server workload, which lowers fan power, reduces cooling costs, and decreases acoustics of the chassis.
Thermally optimized chassis
The ability of the MX7000 chassis to air-cool the eight slots is directly affected by the storage configuration of each sled as well as the placement of sleds in the chassis. For example: Pulling air through a sled that has six hard drives is harder than with a sled that has four hard drives. Machine learning is built into the sled and chassis firmware to dynamically analyze the ability of the chassis to deliver air-cooling to each sled.
A consistent storage configuration maximizes cooling across all sleds and enables the MX760c to support up to six 2.5-in. storage devices with the latest 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® CPUs.
A varied storage configuration with MX760c sleds enables support for up to four 2.5-in. storage devices to maximize cooling through each sled.
MX7000 air-cooling enhancements
MX7000 chassis and MX sleds introduced the capability to dynamically calculate the cooling based on the chassis configuration. This capability enabled Dell to offer a thermally optimized chassis with a consistent storage configuration that increases cooling for sleds by 20 percent. Dell used this additional cooling capability to offer high-power CPUs with storage configurations that were not supported by previous generations.
The industry trend of increasing power per node every generation has significantly challenged the ability to deliver air-cooled solutions. The MX7000 chassis introduced the next-generation Gold Grade chassis fans with the MX760c sleds to provide an air-cooled solution with the latest high-powered CPUs. Gold Grade fans deliver 25 percent more cooling per sled than the previous-generation Silver Grade fans.
Enterprise Infrastructure Planning Tool
The Dell Enterprise Infrastructure Planning Tool (EIPT) helps IT professionals plan and tune their systems and infrastructure for maximum efficiency. Customers can model their customized MX7000 chassis and sled configurations in EIPT. The trained machine learning model enables the tool to identify the maximum data center ambient temperature supported by the sleds. It also identifies the most thermally optimized configuration when sleds have a varied storage configuration. This means that new and existing customers can identify the most efficient sled-to-slot configuration to optimize their chassis for maximum cooling capability while lowering power, costs, and fan noise.
Conclusion
Dell continues to deliver innovative solutions that expand the air-cooled feature-rich configuration choices for the PowerEdge MX7000 chassis and server sleds. Dell Engineering combined machine learning technology with next-generation fans to provide customers the latest high-performance CPUs with more local storage configurations than previous generations in an air-cooled chassis. In addition to the expanded air-cooling configurations, Dell also offers Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) for the PowerEdge MX7000 chassis and server sleds. The features and potential benefits of DLC are discussed in a separate Direct from Development tech note.
References
- Tech Talk Video: The MX7000 Introduces a New Thermal Innovation
- Direct from Development Tech Note: The History of Server and Data Center Cooling Technologies