GRC EVP, Business Development Jim Weynand speaks with Datacentre Solutions, discussing our liquid immersion cooling technology, key partnerships with both server OEMs and major data centre infrastructure providers, and how we see the data centre cooling market developing over time.
IT pundits and data center experts agree. Time is running out for air-cooled data centers as they struggle to meet the demands of irreversible trends. These include increases in density which air can no longer handle cost-effectively, edge computing in remote, often harsh environments, and sustainability issues pertaining to energy usage, energy waste, and overall data center impact on the environment.
Good news: immersion cooling addressed all these concerns. Even better news: two global technology innovators—Intel® and GRC, the Immersion Cooling Authority®—have partnered to perfect the entire immersion cooling ecosystem, paving the way to unchecked data center potential.
Watch this video and you’ll hear all the details straight from Mohan J. Kumar, Intel’s Data Platform Group Fellow, and GRC’s CEO Peter Poulin. They’ll discuss how the two companies are working together to optimize fluid compatibility, native server design, energy usage and more.
Watch as we install a 336U high-density ICEraQ® immersion cooling system at Zelendata Centar, making it Serbia’s first green data center and a powerful AI computing solution—in only three days.
The Zelendata Centar Features:
- Two ICEraQ Quad Systems Totaling 200 kW
- 336U of High-Density Compute with Supermicro Servers
- 90% Reduction in Cooling Power & 40% Less Total Energy Consumption
- Wind as Its Primary Power Source
- Zero Water Waste
- Zero Installation Waste
And, this is just the beginning. They have plans for a total of eight ICEraQ Quad systems totaling 800 kW — that’s equivalent to over 64 standard, air-cooled racks!
Whether you’re looking to build the greenest data center ever or simply improve the efficiency of your current operation reach out to a GRC expert to see what we can do for you. +1 512.692.8003 / info@grcmain2025v2.wpenginepowered.com
Time-Lapse Installation Video of Two GRC Quads in Serbia’s First Green Data Center
Some Very Green Facts About the New Zelendata Centar
• 336U of high-density compute, built to support Artificial Intelligence processing demands
• 90% reduction in cooling system electrical consumption
• 40% reduction in total energy consumption
• Main source of electrical power: MK Fintel Winds’ Košava Wind Farm in Izbiste
• Zero water waste with a closed-loop hybrid dry cooling tower
• All internal fans were removed from the Supermicro servers as part of our conversion to immersion process before being immersed in
our ElectroSafe® coolant
• Zero installation waste – recyclable materials only
• Only “spare and repair” parts remain at the site
• The data center was designed and built to achieve the lowest possible carbon footprint
The Installation
You’ll notice there are no raised floors. We worked straight on polished concrete.
Even the Coolant Distribution Units (CDU) are being placed straight on the concrete floor.
The installation of two ICEraQ™ Quads begins by placing secondary containment decks on the concrete floor. Notice, we hand lift the racks and carry them in place.
The actual installation crew included three technicians. The rest of the people are running power, water and prepping the network backbone.
The installation is very straight-forward and clean – typical for GRC.
You will see we begin connecting some hoses and manifolds from the racks to the CDU’s and start filling the ICEraQ’s with coolant. Each ICEraQ takes about 20 minutes to completely fill.
Maintenance training takes place both during the installation process and after it’s completed.
By the way, it was really cold in there – about 12oF/-11.1oC
As you’d imagine, there were quite a few observers on hand to watch this green data center come to life. Even with a lot of activity in the work area, we’re already installing and filling the four racks of the second ICEraQ Quad.
By now we’ve connected all the racks to a control computer, started monitoring CDU functions, checked performance, and made final adjustments to each rack. We’ll run the system for a couple of days to make sure everything is completely sealed and in perfect working order.
The final image shows the two ICEraQ Quads with an interface to monitor and control all system functions from a single location. The setup also includes a hoist to facilitate lifting the Supermicro servers in and out of the racks.
Zelendata Centar will soon expand their HPC capacity by adding six more ICEraQ quads, further strengthening their position as the most environmentally-responsible colocation data center in Serbia.
Rapid Deployment
Only three days were required to completely prep, install, and test two ICEraQ Quads — turning four walls and a bare concrete floor into an up and ready-to-run 200 kW capable data center.
Conversely, a typical comparable air-cooled data center would take closer to 12 months.
ICEtank liquid-immersion cooled modular data centers from GRC are the answer if you need to add computing power in an out-of-the-way place, on the edge, in harsh environments, or if you want to expand your data center but have run out of space.
These reliable, tried-and-tested systems can protect IT’s most precious assets – your servers, while offering exceptional energy efficiency, complete portability, tremendous cost-savings plus extraordinary environmental resilience.
One GRC client realized a 41% energy cost savings using ICEtank compared to air cooling.
A pioneer of single-phase liquid immersion cooling for the last 10 years, GRC has helped clients in 13 countries reap the benefits of ICEtank’s technology.
ICEtank™ Immersion Cooled Modular Data Center Overview
Immersion cooling enables a couple of things that traditional cooling does not enable.
Its extraordinary energy efficiency
We’ve been doing modular data centers for the Air Force for some time. At the conclusion of the 3-year study they did, they concluded that they were saving 41% of their total energy cost for those modular data centers when compared to their traditional air-cooled data centers. The second item is how
It protects your most expensive and valuable assets – the servers that are actually being immersed in our system.
We call this part of the environmental resilience because when you immerce these in the coolant, they are now protected from any airborne particulates, from humidity, oxidation, you remove the fans so you don’t have fan vibration. So when you think about it in the context of Edge Computing, now you have a system that you can deploy on the edge that has a great environmental resilience for harsh environments.
We’ve been building these modular data centers for quite some time, and what that’s done for our customers,anyway, it has enabled us to provide a broad range of configurations depending on what the customer’s needs are. You can choose whatever rack density you want, 25-100kw, dumb or intelligent PDU’s, integrated UPSs or discreet UPS in gensets.
There are multiple ways for you to reject the heat out of the modular data center whether that’s with traditional evap cooling towers, or a dry cooler, or a hybrid cooler. When you can mix and match all of those things, it gives you a lot of flexibility to meet your requirements. And you can do it in a very cost effective way. Typically our systems are a dollar to three dollars a watt depending on how complex your configuration is.
For GRC, this is not new technology, we have been doing this for 10 years now. What that ten years gets you is a lot of deployments, we’ve done them in over 13 countries now, with customers who are helping us to continue to mature and advance the product.
We have a very mature product line. Customers who bring our product into their environment know that it is extremely reliable and have the confidence in deploying it. And, most importantly, it enables them to save time and money.
GRC CEO, Peter Poulin, and Asperitas Founder & CEO, announce the launch of ImmersionFAQ.com. The educational website was designed to dispel the rumors and spread the truth about immersion cooling. It’s a great place to start learning how your data center can operate more efficiently, for less, with immersion cooling. Visit Now
With its ability to cool even the densest rack configurations, vastly reduce capital expenditures and operating costs, as well as promote green initiatives, immersion-cooled data centers from GRC serve a wide range of organizational needs.
Watch this video and see how this revolutionary but field-proven solution appeals to CIOs, CFOs and sustainability officers alike.
Given the growing importance of IT to an organization’s success, data center cooling energy efficiencies are on the minds of many C-suite executives. Fortunately, GRC’s ICEraQ™ micro-modular, liquid immersion cooling system can help them achieve unprecedented cost, performance, space and energy efficiencies.
GRC pioneered the adoption of single-phase liquid-immersion cooling around the world. Since 2009, this game-changing technology has been shown to help corporate leaders achieve the goals they care about most. That includes slashing data center build costs up to 50%, energy usage up to 95% and operational costs up to 50%, accompanied by tremendous reliability and scalability, plus a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
As this video shows, with GRC, improvements in the server room ring loud in the boardroom.
How ICEraQ™ Immersion-Cooled Data Centers Meet Diverse Organizational Needs
This is Corporate Cloud Company’s data center team. They all have different priorities and want different things.
The CIO insists on the best high-capacity machines on the market. The CFO is carefully watching the project’s cost. And, the head of the company’s sustainability and efficiency department wants as little power consumption as possible.
High-performing, cost-conscious and energy efficient. Sound impossible? Not for Corporate Cloud, because they found GRC, who provides liquid-immersion cooling solutions to innovative data centers around the world.
GRC’s ICEraQ uses a special liquid coolant called ElectroSafe™ that is used in place of chilled air to remove heat from the data center. With ElectroSafe and the ICEraQ system around it, the amount of energy required to cool servers is reduced by 95%.
The CIO is happy to learn that the immersion cooling solution is not only compatible, it’s approved for leading OEM and ODM server manufacturers. Plus, GRC’s immersion cooling has shown to improve the performance and reliability of hardware.
The modular design also allows for easy scalability and as much as 2 times the density of conventional data centers, helping save valuable floorspace.
Next, the CFO calculates the total cost of ownership. With 95% less power consumption, the continuous operational cost drops by 50%. And unlike traditional cooling systems which require chillers, air handlers and raised flooring, GRC does not need any of these. Since no refrigeration is required, there is no need for chillers. And because only 50% power is used, a backup generator can be half the conventional size.
As there is no complex air-flow architecture, raised flooring is also not needed.
All considered, Corporate Cloud will now save 60% on the infrastructure costs on a new build, and those savings start from day one.
Additionally, GRC can be installed in a fraction of the time compared to lengthy conventional installations.
With GRC, Corporate Cloud is happy to see their needs met without compromise.
Find out how we can meet your needs at grcooling.com.
Need to install or maintain a server immersed in an ICEraQ™ liquid-immersion-cooling system? GRC makes it simple.
This short video shows how to do it in six simple steps.
To make life easier for data center operators, we’ve thought through the entire operational design of the ICEraQ System. Its open-rack concept speeds access. And integrated service rails put your work at an ideal height.(You’ll never need to lift the heaviest—that is densest—server from the bottom of the rack to work on it.)
Use nitrile gloves if you like; but there’s also no need to fret about immersing your hands in the ElectroSafe™ coolant. ElectroSafe is non-toxic, does not readily ignite, is not reactive with water, and is very stable as well. What’s more, ICEraQruns almost silently. So it’s no problem to talk and problem-solve right at the rack.
Dive in and you’ll be done in no time.
Our ICEraQ® micro-modular rack-based immersion cooling system might sound like a complex way to cool a data center. But the very opposite is true. Although it has been shown to improve data center performance, slash build costs, plus reduce energy usage and maintenance, it’s actually built for simplicity from the ground up.
As for the ElectroSafe® immersion cooling fluid, it’s totally non-toxic, non-conductive, does not readily ignite, is not reactive with water, and is also very stable.
In addition, ICEraQ runs almost silently. And the only maintenance requirement on the whole system is a filter change typically needed once a year.