DCP Takes on the Chill Off 2

In June 2007, Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) held a Data Center Energy Summit at Sun Microsystems Santa Clara, CA Campus. This summit showcased 13 demonstration projects from participants all over the Sliicon Valley. One of the most intriguing projects was the Chill Off. An effort to compare cooling technologies side by side to see how efficient they were. The results were presented by Dean Nelson from Sun Microsystems and Tim Xu from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL) along with a panel of the participating companies. A summary of this event was captured in Dean Nelson’s blog.

In October 2008, Sun Microsystems signed up for the Chill Off 2 to expand the testing that was done in 2007. Not only would the testing increase the rack densities from 11kW to 30kW, it added five more layers that addressed many of the areas that Data Center owners and operators were challenged with. Coordination quickly began to line up the multi-layered DC test stack.

On Friday November 14, 2009, Data Center Pulse became an official sponsor of the Chill Off 2 because of the independent, unbiased effort that the it represents. Data Center Pulse members are leading the 2008/2009 efforts including program management, test coordination, hosting and reporting. All Chill Off updates will be reported through the datacenterpulse.org website.

A video summary podcast has been created to introduce the industry to the effort. it is also posted on the Datan Ceter Pulse YouTube channel. A blog detailing the weekly activities will be posted on datacenterpulse.org soon.