Chill-Off project tests various recipes for real-world data center cooling

It seems appropriate as I hunker down in my rather chilly office that I pen this post about the ongoing data center "Chill-Off" projects being run by the Association For Computer Operations Management (AFCOM) in Northern California. The intention of the Chill-Off demonstrations/tests is to monitor the effect of modular cooling systems and how they respond to various real-world environments, such as peak e-Bay auction volumes, as an example. The data that the group is gathering seems appropriate planning fodder for any enterprise data center manager.

Some early results from the first phase were cataloged earlier this year in this blog posting by Dean Nelson, vice president of the AFCOM Northern California chapter and senior director of Global Lab and Data Center Design Services for Sun Microsystems. If you want to check some of this stuff out in action, you can go visit Dean in his data center. Approximately 3,000 people have already done so.

This second blog catalogs the stack that will be tested in Chill-Off 2. At the time this blog entry was written, the group was looking for sponsors to test Web 2.0 applications and a high-performance computing environment. When I spoke with Nelson earlier this fall about the Chill-Off projects, he said they're also looking to mix up the infrastructure vendors that are involved. "We want to push the limit," he said.

Will report back with links to additional test data as it comes in.

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you reading this on the actual date of the post. Now, get off your computer, indulge in some turkey and pie, and go enjoy your family and friends.