3 things standing in the way of liquid cooling adoption
Liquid cooling is rising, but these barriers still stand in the way.
What are the barriers to liquid cooling in data centres? From interviews and conversations with industry insiders and experts, these 3 stood out.
When I wrote recently that liquid cooling might not be for everyone, some agreed while others said today's modest average rack density isn't a good indicator. I'll leave you to read about it in the rich comments to this post here (LinkedIn).
For today, let's look at some roadblocks to adoption of liquid cooling in the data centre.
Misconceptions abound
Hyperscale cloud giants know exactly what they want with liquid cooling. However, the majority of data centres globally are still made up of colocation and on-premises data centres for enterprises.
And there is a lot of misconception around it, likely due to the disproportionate news coverage of AI data centres and the confusing array of liquid cooling solutions available.
Some misconceptions:
- We must do 100kW racks to future-proof ourselves.
- It's too expensive an investment with no ROI.
- It's an all-or-nothing proposition.
Such erroneous beliefs could stop enterprises or government agencies from adopting more flexible liquid cooling options such as active rear door cooling (RDHx) or rolling out pilot direct-to-chip cooling deployments.
Operational considerations
There are real operational issues that need to be considered too, as liquid cooling is managed differently from traditional air cooling.
- Additional maintenance required.
- Shift in responsibilities calls for new procedures.
- Collaboration needed during emergencies (e.g. leaks).
Also, things can go bad much quicker with liquid cooling, so reaction times might need to be adjusted.
Interoperability of equipment
Finally, a lack of global standards for liquid cooling means that the interoperability that we take for granted might not be present.
Some considerations:
- Liquid flow rates.
- Variations in piping types.
- Compatibility between vendors.
In some cases, the heavier weight of certain liquid cooling solutions might make retrofitting older data centres with lower floor loading capacity problematic.
What other challenges can you think of?