Calgary’s CoolIT Systems receives order to expand Polish high-performance computing centre

Calgary-based CoolIT Systems, a provider of Direct Contact Liquid Cooling technology for data centres, has received an order from the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in Poland to expand its Direct Contact Liquid Cooled (DCLC) cluster, installed by CoolIT this past May.

The order consists of an additional 17 racks of liquid cooled Huawei servers, to be installed in December, on top of the three already in place.

“Last summer we had a long period of 40°C weather and our AC cooling system went nuts. It was very difficult to keep the air-cooled racks running under those conditions,” said PSNC IT Specialist Radoslaw Januszewski. “The liquid cooled racks were the only ones that continued to operate effectively, so it proves we made the right decision to go with CoolIT Systems and their reliable technology.”

The market in high-performance computing in Europe is set to grow dramatically, as the European Commission has announced earlier this month that it intends to invest €700 million in a High Performance Computing Contractual Public-Private Partnership over the next few years.

The PSNC cluster manages over 80% of server heat using the CoolIT Systems Rack liquid cooling system in combination with Huawei blade servers in an E9000 chassis.

The racks use centralized pumping and a heat exchange system to provide liquid cooling to the computer’s processor, RAM and VRM components.

The installation will see the server energy captured re-used to heat on-campus buildings, making the Poznan Center, located at the Institute of Bio-organic Chemistry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the most efficient high-performance computing clusters in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Asia) region.

The PSNC is one of Europe’s premier centers for high-speed computing and implements innovative technologies for the national scientific network.

The installation is in partnership between CoolIT, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, and Polish IT infrastructure integration firm Itprojekt.

CoolIT has over 50 patents and has deployed more than 2 million liquid cooling units.