10
NEWS IN BRIEF
STULZ offers next
generation data
centre climate control
with CyberWall
STULZ has announced the availability of its CyberWall
cooling solution.
Designed for operators of large, colocation and
hyperscale data centres, it comprises a range of precision
air conditioning units specifically developed for facilities
with separate aisles. Its horizontal airflow technology
enables reliable operation of high IT load densities,
without the use of raised floors or side coolers.
Heat density within racks is increasing with each
new generation of data centre equipment, which is also
extremely sensitive and must operate within a strict
temperature range. Data centre operators that fail to
combat this increase in heat load, risk causing significant
harm to their IT equipment, reducing its operational
life, lowering performance and reliability, and increasing
energy expenditure.
To protect equipment and offer cooling performance,
CyberWall is configured around high performance fan
walls comprising cutting edge electronically commutated
(EC) fans with integrated air/water heat exchangers. This
allows a cooling capacity of around 100kW per metre of
wall length to be achieved and means that the efficient
air conditioning of high power densities, as well as racks
of 42U or more, is now possible.
STULZ has designed CyberWall so that indoor air
handlers with cold water connection can be mounted
in rows or stacked without gaps – making use of all
available wall space and optimising system performance.
Mounted at the aisle end, where they supply individual
rack rows horizontally with cold air, the warm aisle
is separated by a containment system with a ceiling
duct, so that reliable separation of cold and warm air
is guaranteed. The CyberWall system also fits precisely
into the existing service corridor, which allows the
maintenance of air conditioners to be completed without
the need for personnel to enter the server area.
STULZ CyberWall modules achieve an impressive
cooling capacity of 220kW, with 16°C water inlet, and
an airflow rate of 55,000m³/h per air conditioning
unit. As part of its Custom Indoor Air Handling Unit
(AHU) series, STULZ provides a wide range of output
sizes and designs, offering customers a portfolio of unit
dimensions, components and capacities to meet specific
requirements. The combination of CyberWall and the
Custom Indoor AHU series provides operators access to
a high performance cooling solution, which takes into
account ASHRAE specifications and achieves impressive
partial Power Usage Effectiveness (pPUE) values.
‘Climate management is one of the key challenges
faced by operators of large, colocation and hyperscale
data centres,’ commented Tobias Wolf, Deputy Head
of Product Management at STULZ. ‘With CyberWall,
STULZ has used its extensive research and development
capabilities to develop a genuine game changer in
effective air conditioning, allowing operators to protect
their technology investments and maximise uptime.’ n
Exertis Hammer announces DDN
distribution agreement
Distributor Exertis Hammer has announced an EMEA-wide distribution agreement with
leading big data storage supplier to data-intensive, global organisations, DDN.
The vendor designs, develops, deploys, and optimises systems, software and storage
solutions that enables service providers, universities, and government agencies to generate
more value and accelerate time to insight from their data, on premise and in the cloud.
Adam Blackwell, General Manager at Exertis Hammer, says it makes for a perfect fit for
the award-winning distributor’s portfolio. “New and existing customers will hugely benefit
from DDN’s focus on artificial intelligence, big data and high performance computing (HPC)
that this partnership will bring to our offering, alongside Exertis Hammer’s value-add ethos
and proven expertise in the storage and enterprise arena. Adding DDN to our reputable
market-leading portfolio, which includes stalwarts such as Intel, AMD, and Nvidia/Mellanox,
and now key name in the industry, DDN, gives Exertis Hammer the ability to offer a true endto-end
solution, ideal for key vertical markets such as AI, M&E, and HPC.”
DDN provides scalable solutions that fit customers’ at-scale data needs today and in
the future. This means faster ingest, maximised processing, and reduced application run
times through simple and proven architectures. All with the goal of accelerating research,
delivering faster results and increasing revenue. Globally, and in every industry, DDN
empowers thousands of customers to accelerate their business using artificial intelligence
and deep learning. The introduction of its innovative solutions to Exertis Hammer’s
portfolio will enhance customers’ ability to extract value from and manage their data
better, faster, and safer.
DDN has also, within the past month, announced support for NVIDIA DGX A100
systems in its A3I solutions. DGX A100 is the world’s first 5-petaflops AI system that
consolidates the power and capabilities of an entire data center into a single flexible
platform. A3I combines DDN storage, DGX A100 systems and NVIDIA Mellanox highspeed
networking to supply optimised compute and I/O based on common principles of
parallelism, performance and scale.
“Exertis Hammer is an ideal distribution partner with a heritage in the delivery of
performance-intensive computing solutions that complement DDN’s AI, big data,
multicloud, and high-performance computing storage,” said Kurt Kuckein, Vice President
of Marketing at DDN. “With Exertis Hammer’s technical and market understanding, and
in-country support, DDN partners will be well placed to convert Intelligent Infrastructure
opportunities and push the boundaries of AI on a much greater scale.” n
Organisations turn to NetOps to
prevent network outages caused by
infrastructure changes
Nearly half (48%) of senior IT decision-makers globally say that more than quarter of the
outages their organisations have suffered over the past two years have been caused by
changes to the network infrastructure, according to a recent survey of 500 global IT decision
makers commissioned by Opengear, a Digi International company.
The study, titled ‘Measuring the True Cost of Network Outages,’ found that almost half
(44%) of survey respondents said they were ‘increasing the level of automation across the
network’ to drive up network resilience within their organisation and combat these outages.
In addition, nearly 60% of the overall survey sample said their organisation had
introduced a NetOps automation approach across its network operations. Significantly, 89%
said that it had made that network more reliable.
Steve Cummins, vice president of marketing, Opengear, said: “With outages on the rise,
and network engineers currently unable to travel to affected sites to make fixes, network
automation is rapidly becoming a necessity. Being able to use standard NetOps tools within
the network management infrastructure itself, simplifies and accelerates deployment of
those automation routines. A NetOps-enabled console server can be the key to unlocking
NetOps for many companies.”
In addition to increased network reliability, respondents most commonly cited enhanced
security (48%), time savings (45%) and cost savings (41%) as the biggest benefits having a
solution that could operate independently from the main in-band network. n
www.networkseuropemagazine.com