Facility Cooling Failure Analysis of Direct Liquid Cooling System in Data Centers

Abstract

This work experimentally studies the impact of facility cooling failure of a direct liquid cooling (DLC) system on the IT equipment (ITE). The facility side of a DLC system removes the heat from a secondary loop — in direct contact with the ITE — and discard it in a chiller loop or ambient. The CPU utilization and coolant set point temperature (SPT) are varied to understand the effect of failure under different operating conditions. The ITE response is studied in terms of chip temperature and power, and fan speed. It was found that failure of the facility cooling system is not hazardous to the IT operation. The rate of change in temperature after failure is low and is sufficient to turn the ITE off safely. This is attributed to the surrounding air in the data center and the thermal mass of the cooling system.