One Data Center To Rule Them All

1sockchuck writes "Weta Digital, the New Zealand studio that created the visual effects for the 'Lord of the Rings' movie trilogy, has launched a new "extreme density" data center to provide the computing horsepower to power its digital renderings. Weta is running four clusters that are each equipped with 156 of HP's new 2-in-1 blade servers, and use liquid cooling to manage the heat loads. The Weta render farms currently hold spots 219 through 222 on the current Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers."

Obligatory...

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

No, imagine

a balrog cluster of them!

Re:No, imagine

Networked on a Tolkien ring?

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thread fucking over. LOL

Re:No, imagine

Yeah, that was quite preciousssssss.

Re:

Throughput on a Tolkien ring can reach very high performance levels when the data is encoded in an Elvish Language.

For strange characters support, unicorn encoding is recommended.

Re:No, imagine

a balrog cluster of them!

That would be a daemon of the ancient computers.

Releasing the heat?

How do they release the heat in the hot water?

Two Towers?

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"How do they release the heat in the hot water?"

They don't, the Orc's working there, have been waiting for a hot water bath for years.

"Extreme Density" computing can be hazardous

I can't mention who I work for for obvious reasons, but we did some experimenting with "extreme density" computing some time ago as part of a black ops project for the government. We achieved densities previously unheard of by man.

Unfortunately, we got greedy. We increased the density so far that the entire facility ended up collapsing into a black hole, wiping out much of the state of North Dakota. We were able to contain the damage, and we've managed to keep it a secret by replacing the state with a hologram projection, but eventually someone is going to go there and figure out that something is amiss.

...and a darkness spread over the land...

Note the vague phonetic similarity between "North Dakota" and "Mordor."

Did this project happen to hand out t-shirts... or, hm, something less obvious like... rings?

Water-cooled datacenters

I'm of a mixed mindset when it comes to water-cooled datacenters.

On one hand, you've got the makings of a biblical scale disaster with all that water and electricity mixing.

On the other hand, you can't argue with it's effectiveness.

I'll stick to non-catastrophic issues when my
air conditioner breaks down.

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I agree. Plus, even though they mention the Rittal units [rittal.com], no one seems to be able to answer how the water cooled units plan for redundancy. It might not be pretty, but at least in a "traditional" raised floor/forced air solution, you can deploy spot coolers and/or fans as you need to mitigate an outage or allow for maintenance. What do you do when you burst a cooling water pipe as it distributes to a row of equipment?

Re:Water-cooled datacenters

Liquid cooled, not water cooled. They cool it in an inert liquid, rather than water.

Re:Water-cooled datacenters

Would it be a good idea to replace the water with mineral oil? I'm sure a lot of you have seen the computers submerged in mineral oil, so it would probably just cause a mess if there was a leak. The problem with mineral oil (based on my limited knowledge from searching just now) is that it's not as efficient at removing heat as water, and after time the oil breaks down and needs replacing to remain at its most efficient. I'm not sure if the heat levels from a server would be high enough to degrade the oil though. I'm also uncertain if the oil would cause any damage to the pumps (or whatever pushes the liquid around) in the water cooling system.

Re:Water-cooled datacenters

I'm of a mixed mindset when it comes to water-cooled datacenters.

On one hand, you've got the makings of a biblical scale disaster with all that water and electricity mixing.

We had such a disaster many years ago.

The coolant lines themselves circled the walls near the ceiling of the dinosaur pen. Beneath each line was a drip tray that was alarmed to sound in case moisture was detected. These drip trays ran the entire length of the coolant lines. That is, the entire length except for about six inches in the very corner, where it was too hard for the tray installers to get to because they were behind the conduit leading down to the main power transformer. I can only assume that all that conduit also made it difficult for the plumbers to properly solder the elbow in the cooling line as well.

Of course there was only one place for the pipe to leak. The version of the tale I heard implies an impressive display of fireworks was seen by all present as the coolant entered the transformer.

Fortunately, the loss of power did not damage the mainframes (except for their ability to run.) The rooftop generator was fired up, and in short order the mainframes were back on line.

And in short order the generator engines stopped because the fuel tanks were kept almost empty, the plan being to fully fuel them only in case of need.

Once the replacement fuel was delivered, the generators ran for only a few minutes before dying again, this time for good. The ancient fuel had congealed in the injectors once the engines had stopped running.

We ran our data center for two weeks powered from a truck-based generator parked in the street while the electricians replaced the transformers and repaired the generators.

I now hear the diesel generator being started every month or two, and run for a few hours.

Rather than a biblical disaster, I'd say it was more like a Marx Brothers' movie.

Re:

Well they may be using a different liquid than water. Mainframes have been using water cooling for years.
But even if they are using water we are talking about professionals here. They have been water cooling electrical devices that are far more dangerous than CPUs for many years.
http://www.cobermuegge.com/details.asp?id=90 [cobermuegge.com]
And here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube#Cooling [wikipedia.org]

Liquid Cooled! Awesome

I think it's great that they are using liquid coolants for their system. Whenever I see a traditional server farm, I just can't help but think that air conditioners are so inefficient for the task of cooling computers. Not only do you have to cool the air, you also have to blow it around. The floors in some data centers are raised just to allow better airflow. And if you think about it, only the insides of the computers have to be cooled, not the entire freaking room. I hope this ushers in a new age of more power-efficient computing.

I also think it's pretty funny that a supercomputer is used to make movies.

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I know what you mean, but I get nervous about that much water around my computers. A leak would be catastrophic.

When my air conditioner breaks down [blogspot.com], I don't have a life threatening situation.

That darn Vinge...

I also think it's pretty funny that a supercomputer is used to make movies.

It was pretty funny forty years ago [wikipedia.org], too.

And mega bill for bandwidth?

I wonder how much they have to pay for external bandwidth. I always thought that "super data centers" are used to help split the job between multiple special effects studios, so, say, group in London can work on part of the shot and still have all data in the same place.
Except in New Zealand there are no "unlimited" plans, and there are severe bandwidth caps in place.

Re:And mega bill for bandwidth?

As if a datacenter like this would use a capped ADSL line... You do not have to use the public internet. At some point, it becomes cheaper to use dedicated connections between your offices and datacenters.

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Good ideas into the ground?

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Or you're just a film snob that disagrees with the majority of normal people who actually liked the movie because it looked good and was entertaining.

And why is it that people always have to look down their noses at various items that do well in the general public? It's like if it's popular and the unwashed masses salivate over it, some jackass has to show how superior they are by being different and telling the world that those unwashed masses really are in fact, unwashed. And probably drooling or somethin

Re:

You're either a true expert in the field, who does film-grade compositing every day, or you're a troll.

I've done some chroma-key compositing over background plates myself, albeit for TV. I can honestly say I did not see any artifacts in LoTR - although I admit I haven't checked frame-by-frame.

Either way, show some examples if you want to be taken seriously.