Posted on 11/13/2014 1:21:04 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Another polar vortex may or may not be on its way, but winter means heat bills no matter what. Unless, of course, you get your heat for free from a cabinet full of servers that's sitting in your living room. If you live in Germany, it’s possible!
Cloud&Heat is a cloud infrastructure company that has started distributing its servers to people who want to store them in exchange for free heat in their homes or offices. Since servers generate so much excess heat and cloud companies have to spend a lot to cool them, the idea to repurpose the waste heat isn't new. In fact, Qarnot, a French cloud company, is working on a similar program to Cloud&Heat’s. But as Datacenter Dynamics reports, Cloud&Heat is ahead in terms of implementing the idea.
Customers pay to have a Cloud&Heat fire-proof cabinet installed in their homes or offices (the cost is comparable to installing a standard heating system). Then Cloud&Heat pays for the electricity and Internet service the cabinet needs and the owner gets to enjoy free heat and hot water. Plus Cloud&Heat has some clever fixes in place. If the servers do heavy data processing when no one needs the heat, the system stores hot water in a “buffering tank.” And the Cloud&Heat cabinets can also vent outside in the spring and summer....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Back in the late 90’s....I worked in a Air Force office where we had to put up a rack (one single) with a UPS and a couple of raids attached to a server. As winter came, we came to discover that the radiator in the room was totally unnecessary. In fact, the one rack was putting enough heat that we opened the window five or six times a day to cool off the room. The negative came in the summer, as room temp got pretty excessive and we had to buy a second AC unit to help keep the office cool enough.
Bump!
Trying to formulate a mental image of “the German cloud”. I’m pretty sure it somehow involves “Dieter”, monkeys and shiny leather boots.
Interesting concept, so long as one’s home is not bulging at the seams already! LOL
This illustrates a big problem with the cloud.
Our data centers have security, cameras, dual power supplies, dual cooling, vmware, clean agent fire suppression, VESDA, etc.
This model stores your data in an uncontrolled environment with no security.
My data stays in my data centers. The cloud might be OK for my grandmother’s cat photos.
Actually, the IRS sees this German model as a real plus — it’s so easy to lose all the important stuff!!
At work we are spec’ing out a single rack server system, not even a full rack... With a 6 Kilowatt power supply. All that juice has to go somewhere. Granted, the 6 KW is slightly over-spec’d from what we expect normal operating levels to be (you don’t want to run your components flat-out 24x7) but still, lots of heat (and noise from cooling system) coming... Yes, the server room has a raised floor and dedicated cooling...
Back in '89 I was assigned to a unit in Korea where we had a huge mainframe system that was kept cool by huge a/c units. We worked directly in line of the vents (both above and below us). It was funny, because you would see many of the folks working with the system bringing their winter parkas to work on a summer day with temps in the high 80s and humidity to match.
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