Product

Castrol’s work with Submer on immersion cooling gains momentum

Castrol is working with Submer, a frontrunner in immersion cooling systems. Castrol’s cooling fluids are designed to maximise data centre cooling efficiency, offer enhanced equipment protection and can help safeguard against facility downtime by comprehensive material testing. Immersion cooling involves submerging electronic components in a non-conductive liquid coolant. Compared to conventional cooling methods, immersion cooling can help reduce the consumption of energy and water needed to cool servers and storage devices, and enables the reuse of generated waste heat. Submer has now conducted a comprehensive compatibility study through its Immersion Centre of Excellence on Castrol ON Immersion Cooling Fluid DC 20. The product exceeded Submer’s technical requirements and has now been fully approved and warranty-backed for use across Submer equipment. “This is a significant milestone in Castrol’s collaboration with Submer,” comments Nicola Buck, CMO, Castrol. “We are now well-positioned to work together in developing a joint offer to data centre customers and magnify each other’s market reach and impact. We aspire to make immersion cooling technology mainstream in the data centre industry and will develop integrated customer offers to further improve the technology and address hurdles for adoption.”  Nicola adds, “We strongly believe in the future of immersion cooling technology as it can help achieve significant operational benefits for the data centre industry and address some of its future challenges. Through this collaboration with Submer, we want to help optimise the efficiency and energy usage across some of the world’s most powerful data centres. This is also aligned to Guiding Principle 4 of our PATH360 sustainability programme and the work we are doing with our customers to help them save energy, waste and water.” “Submer’s journey to fluid standardisation began in 2020. We're now proud to be seeing tangible results from our rigorous array of testing, including thermal performance, oxidation, and a sustainability assessment, all of which ensure all fluids meet industry standards. With Castrol on board, the widescale adoption of immersion cooling is one step closer”, says Peter Cooper, VP of Fluids and Chemistry at Submer.

Vertiv introduces UPS for distributed IT networks and edge applications

Vertiv has introduced the Vertiv Liebert GXE, an online double-conversion single-phase UPS, available in 6kVA and 10kVA power ratings in either a tower or rackmount configuration. The system is designed to provide reliable power to distributed IT networks and edge computing applications in various industry segments such as enterprise, government, manufacturing, finance, education and retail. The product is globally available for countries and organisations using 230V solutions, and is now shipping from stock in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The Liebert GXE performs with high efficiency up to 94% in online mode, and up to 98% in ECO mode, driving energy and operational costs savings compared to other models available on the market. The high output power factor of 1.0 enables continuous and reliable power to more connected devices, protecting them against many disturbances in the AC mains with the online double conversion technology and the input surge protection. The flexible rackmount or tower form factor, with rackmount kits included as a standard, facilitates stock management for distribution in the IT channel, and simplifies installation to accommodate various micro data centre and edge computing needs. The unit’s runtime can be extended with up to four external battery cabinets (EBC) for longer back-up protection, and the hot-swappable VRLA batteries can be easily replaced by users without the assistance of skilled personnel and without shutdown of the loads for smoother operations and minimised maintenance costs. Additionally, the Liebert GXE has an integrated 4A charger providing quick battery recharge up to 90% in just three hours - which can be critical in case of frequent mains failures - and an integrated battery management system to optimise battery life and recycling. The Vertiv Liebert GXE includes a user-friendly LCD colour display that makes it easy and intuitive to use. The unit offers remote monitoring capabilities for quick and easy access to IT infrastructure, through the optional Vertiv Liebert Intellislot Unity Communications card and a free download of Vertiv Power Insight software. Moreover, customers can also rely on Vertiv LIFE Services to support remote maintenance and servicing of the UPS for maximum availability. “IT channel distributors and resellers are constantly looking for efficient and cost effective solutions to protect small and micro IT sites against power outages,” says Andrea Ferro, Vice President channel, IT and edge applications for Vertiv in EMEA. “This latest addition to our IT channel portfolio provides all the key features and performance capabilities needed in an online double conversion UPS for an affordable price, which allows small and medium businesses of all industries to leverage the latest technologies and accelerate their digital transformation journey.” As part of Vertiv’s IT channel portfolio, the Liebert GXE enables EMEA resellers in participating countries to earn points through the Vertiv Incentive Programme (VIP), which allows partners to easily win rewards without the need for any reporting. Bonus points are uploaded into the Vertiv Partner Portal monthly, and the partner only needs to log in to redeem them.

LYTT joins the AWS partner network to scale analytics platform

LYTT and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have collaborated to scale LYTT’s sensor fusion insights platform using AWS’ cloud infrastructure. LYTT offers a cloud-based, end-to-end data analytics platform that transforms petabytes of sensor data into connected and actionable insights, visualised via an intuitive user interface. Industrially proven in oil and gas, LYTT has helped customers across the globe address flow, solids, integrity, and seismic operational challenges, unlocking millions of dollars in value. LYTT's sensor fusion enabled solutions are applicable across multiple sectors, and are currently also being applied to carbon capture storage (CCS) and water utilities. As a result of joining the AWS partner network, LYTT will be able to take advantage of AWS’ global reach, scalability and expertise, to expand its customer base and identify new opportunities to deploy its cloud-based, end-to-end data analytics platform. LYTT will also gain new business momentum to enhance the value of its unique offering with resources, programs, and benefits that will help the business drive greater profitability for energy and water utilities across the globe. Ian Setterfield, Sales and Business Development Manager, LYTT, explains, “Our latest agreement with AWS unlocks the next level of scalability by underpinning LYTT’s sensor fusion-enabled solutions with a robust, secure cloud architecture. Cloud technology enables our real-time monitoring platform to grow in step with our customers’ needs, and we’re looking forward to developing further relationships in this space to ensure our users can reliably access instant insights on their asset health and performance from anywhere in the world.”

Vertiv introduces new prefabricated modular data centre solution

Vertiv has introduced the Vertiv MegaMod and Vertiv MegaMod Plus, a turnkey prefabricated modular (PFM) data centre solution, deployable in expandable units of 0.5 or 1MW for IT loads up to 2MW or more. The prefabricated modules are integrated and tested with Vertiv power management systems, thermal management solutions, remote monitoring and IT equipment racks to deliver performance, and help companies reduce deployment time by up to 40% when compared to a traditional data centre build. Companies are racing to deploy processing power in new locations to meet demand for digital business products and services. The MegaMod, and the MegaMod Plus - which offers up to 25% more rack and cooling capacity - enable customers to expand core-to-edge data centre networks and rapidly deploy new compute capacity with lower upfront costs, greater predictability and less risk than traditional data centre builds, thanks to proven industrial processes and high standards of quality control. Both solutions provide options to grow horizontally or vertically, with MegaMod providing cooling capacity in the IT Hall area, while MegaMod Plus is configured with cooling modules that support the IT hall space expansions.  “Historically, facilities have typically been stick-built, requiring long lead times and heavy upfront capital investment. However, growing digitalisation trends have urged investors and data centre operators to reconsider this approach,” says Viktor Petik, Vice President and EMEA leader for Vertiv’s Integrated Modular Solutions business. “As demand for digital services soars, data centre owners are better able to capture this growth if they can accelerate the rollout of new capacity. The good news is that prefabricated modular data centres like Vertiv MegaMod enable stakeholders to act quickly.” Vertiv says that the solution is ideal for medium size data centres, and can be easily deployed and expanded as business needs grow. Vertiv also provides end-to-end services for a straightforward start-up and smooth operation, including deployment, commissioning, ongoing maintenance, remote monitoring and training.

Legrand and Superior Essex launch PoE cabling system

Legrand and Superior Essex Communications have teamed up at the BICSI Winter conference and exhibition to launch the brand new nCompass Systems Extended Distance cabling system. According to Legrand, this product exceeds current industry benchmarks for deploying high-power power over ethernet (Hi-PoE) on an IP network. The Extended Distance solution represents the next generation of cable connectivity for commercial customers. IoT, 5G, and the increasing number of connected devices deployed in commercial buildings today have created a demand for new communications cabling solutions that offer enhanced, multifunctional capabilities. The new nCompass Extended Distance solution does just that - enabling data and power transport over distances that exceed TIA standards. It is a premium solution that will enable cutting-edge network installations for nCompass customers, including some of the world’s largest commercial operators. Benefits of the Extended Distance solution include: Exceeds 100m (current TIA standard) Device agnostic Can deploy PoE and IP No special components Cost savings Warranty backed UL tested and certified “PoE solves many challenges for today’s forward-looking commercial building operators,” says Kristen Poulos, VP/General Manager at Legrand Data Infrastructure. “By using a single cable for transporting electrical power and data, commercial building operators can reduce overall infrastructure costs, optimise network efficiency, speed up the deployment of vital IT and OT equipment and even improve sustainability. We’re proud to partner with Superior Essex on this new nCompass system, and believe it will play an immediate, critical role in helping commercial building operators reimagine their networks for the future.” “People and businesses demand more converged networks as they add smart devices to their daily activities. This innovative PoE solution allows them to interconnect more devices with greater efficiency and increased control over their entire network,” explains Brian Ensign, Vice President of Marketing for Superior Essex Communications. “This Extended Distance cabling system is a real merging of innovation from both Legrand and Superior Essex, and we’re excited to release yet another cutting-edge solution into the market with our partners.” Legrand will include the nCompass Extended Distance solution in its Clarity performance line, which consists of a suite of high-density jack and multi-contact cords, as well as Superior Essex PowerWise 1G and 10G 4PPoE cables and field term plugs.

Instant migration made possible with WhiteSpider

Organisations will be able to build and move services from one cloud service to another within a single, one-touch solution, thanks to the latest product launch from WhiteSpider. WhiteSpider says that its WhiteSpider Hybrid Cloud solution is among the first in Europe to provide one-touch automated service instantiation and service migration, bringing crucial applications closer to where they’re needed, and deliver a better quality of experience and optimised operations to its users. Whilst data centres have constraints on physical location and the speed of scalability, along with significant upfront costs, public cloud can also carry high ongoing operational and migration costs. In response, the WhiteSpider Hybrid Cloud service has been designed to offer unparalleled scalability, enabling the expansion or contraction of services based on business demands whilst migrating data to the unlimited space available through cloud-based services. “WhiteSpider’s Hybrid Cloud offers unparalleled flexibility where cloud migration is concerned”, says WhiteSpider Managing Director, Phil Lees. “Whether it be a web, storage, or SD-WAN service, it can be built instantly in any cloud, then moved seamlessly between your private and public cloud to where its needed most. This is all managed and provisioned as code rather than manual processes, allowing the implementation of any type of service, at any scale, onto any cloud service required.” Built on Cisco and VMware technologies, the solution is compatible with all major public cloud providers, including AWS, with further integration to Azure and Google Cloud Platform in the coming months. Through WhiteSpider’s Hybrid Cloud, users can rapidly move workloads to where they are needed, whether for cost, compliance or security reasons, and gain visibility of data as it traverses the cloud services. The Hybrid Cloud solution is orchestrated through WhiteSpider’s custom tool, Merlin, which controls the instantiation, management, and monitoring of the infrastructure, giving customers full visibility and insight into the full cloud stack. Through Merlin, WhiteSpider can call upon a library of integrations to support any vendor the customer wishes to utilise.

Ground Labs introduces Enterprise Recon 2.8

Ground Labs has announced the general availability of Enterprise Recon 2.8, the latest version of its award-winning flagship solution. This release enhances support for additional high scale, high volume environments on more Microsoft platforms, including Teams and OneNote, and Salesforce Government Cloud. The latest features extend the number of platforms Enterprise Recon supports for sensitive data scanning of any file type stored on endpoints, servers and cloud environments. As global regulations proliferate and become increasingly stringent, Ground Labs enables enterprises to meet these requirements and avoid heavy financial penalties for noncompliance. Powered by GLASS Technology, Enterprise Recon allows customers to define their own custom data types while maintaining their systems’ performance. “Every day, we hear about another breach, and studies show that companies are often not even aware of a breach until months after it happened,” says Brett Gribble, Head of Product at Ground Labs. “To provide a complete security and data management solution to our customers, we know data discovery must be built into the security strategy. Enterprise Recon supports the industry’s widest number and range of data types to give enterprises maximum visibility and control of their most valuable data assets.” Other key features and benefits of Enterprise Recon 2.8 include the following: ● New global data types: the ability to scan and remediate locations that store unsecured Singapore telephone numbers and next-generation US passport numbers, supporting compliance with the PDPA, CCPA and other related data privacy regulations. ● Data classification: support for the newest Microsoft Information Protection SDK version allows developers to classify and label sensitive content identified in local storage and Windows share locations. ● Reducing false positives: other enhancements to existing capabilities supporting compressed files, Oracle databases and features to further reduce false positives in larger environments have also been added. Enterprise Recon enables organisations to quickly discover, manage and remediate critical categories of data to meet privacy and compliance obligations. Enterprise Recon helps organisations comply with a wide range of international data protection regulations including GDPR, PCI DSS, CCPA, CPRA, HIPAA, PDPA, PIPEDA and CDPA.

Siemens launches digitalised aspirating smoke detectors

Siemens has introduced two new aspirating smoke detectors (ASD), FDA261 and FDA262, catering to particularly challenging fire safety installations that extend over wide areas, such as large data centres, e-commerce warehouses, or industrial manufacturing sites. A single device can cover up to 6,700m2, currently the largest coverage area available on the market. Even for Class A installations with the highest sensitivity requirements, up to 2,000m2 of detection coverage is feasible with a single ASD+ detector. The new ASD Connect app ensures fast and easy digital commissioning. It makes the commissioning process highly automated and intuitive. As a result, the commissioning effort decreases significantly. ASD safeguards megatrends “ASD plays a crucial role in protecting the infrastructure needed to enable global megatrends, such as the energy transition or digitalisation. One example is fire protection for the rapidly growing number of lithium-ion battery energy storage systems,” says Peter Nebiker, Head of Fire Safety at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. The new ASD+ fully integrates in fire safety systems from Siemens, communicating directly and intelligently as addressable devices using the Siemens FDnet/C-NET, without additional hardware cost or wiring for I/O cards. This reduces the time and effort needed for installation while enabling data transmission to the panel and remote locations, such as the cloud. High performance in any environment ASD+ offers better detection performance and maximum immunity to false alarms. Along with high standards for detection sensitivity, the detection optics hardware has been optimised for harsh and dirty environments. The dual-wavelength signal processing algorithm has been improved to reliably differentiate between smoke particles and dust, thus avoiding the risk of false alarms. ASD+ products have adjustable alarm thresholds (0,003 to 20%/m), providing complete flexibility to meet the needs of any application. Additional information such as pre-alarm, dust detection or contamination-level reporting adds value for customers and can be accessed via the Siemens cloud portal. Reflecting Siemens’ dedication to sustainability throughout the product lifecycle, the new products follow a modular design, allowing the detection chamber and aspirator to be easily replaced without reconfiguration.

Lenovo unveils next generation of smart infrastructure solutions

Lenovo has unveiled 25 new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile server and hyperconverged solutions powered by Intel’s fourth generation Xeon Scalable Processors as part of its Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio. Designed to help accelerate global IT modernisation for organisations, the integrated solutions deliver advanced performance, efficiency and management capabilities specifically optimised for complex workloads, including mission-critical, AI, HPC and containerised applications. “In today’s business climate, modern infrastructure solutions that generate faster insights and efficiently enable complex workloads from the edge to the cloud are critical,” says Kamran Amini, Vice President and General Manager of Server and Storage, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “With the performance and management improvements of the Intel-based ThinkSystem V3 portfolio, customers can reduce their IT footprint by up to three times to achieve greater ROI and easily transform their infrastructure with one platform designed for today’s AI, virtualisation, multi-cloud and sustainable computing demands.” As global data proliferation continues, businesses need a new IT architecture that spans client-edge-network-cloud-intelligence to help them innovate to meet ever-evolving customer needs. The next generation of Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile servers and storage with Intel Xeon Scalable processors feature built-in accelerators that can help achieve efficient utilisation and power efficiency across the fastest-growing workloads that businesses depend on. Additionally, the portfolio provides a unique open architecture with advanced management, reliability and security to help companies of all sizes work across diverse clouds while leveraging existing IT environments. Doubling performance for mission-critical workloads The next generation of Lenovo solutions with Intel Xeon Scalable processors accelerate data networking, AI inference and analytics, delivering improved performance to help businesses better manage, process and analyse the explosive growth of data. As the data demands for today’s businesses exponentially increase, the new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile V3 servers are designed to more effectively power today’s most demanding workloads across all industries, including in-memory databases, large transactional databases, batch processing, real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, legacy system replacements and virtualised and containerised workloads. The portfolio also enables faster system configuration setup compared to the previous generation with enhanced XClarity Controller (XCC2) software. Solutions, like the new ThinkSystem SR850 V3, deliver the high performance, reliability and versatility needed to tackle high-intensity workloads in a dense, four-socket 2U design, enabling businesses to quickly respond to expansion needs such as increased data management across manufacturing, healthcare and financial service applications. The server features predictive failure analysis, light path diagnostics and embedded tamper detection to avoid application failures and downtime for more secure data centre operation. Greater performance, less power consumption with new Neptune systems Cooled by fifth generation Lenovo Neptune Direct Water-Cooling technology, Lenovo’s new ThinkSystem SD650 V3 and SD650-I V3 servers extend Neptune efficiency to a new generation of systems that enable customers to reduce power consumption up to 40%. Lenovo has extended liquid cooling beyond CPUs and memory to PCIe, storage, and GPUs and more. The new systems leverage Neptune cooling for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) on select models, providing HPC applications up to four times more memory bandwidth and delivering up to 2.8 times generational performance improvement. HPC users will now have the latest generation Intel Xeon Max Series CPUs with HBM and Intel Data Center Max Series GPUs, all cooled by Lenovo Neptune. HPC workloads utilise system resources at higher levels, over longer periods of time. Lowering a supercomputer’s power usage without sacrificing performance comes with many benefits. Every watt of electricity consumed is converted into heat, which must be removed. In air-cooled systems, heat is removed by system fans, requiring more power. With Neptune, liquid removes the heat, negating the need for power-consuming fans. This allows HPC users to attain greater performance while reducing the energy consumed and the environmental impact of the data centre. From Exascale to Everyscale, Lenovo is committed to enabling organisations of all sizes access the next era of supercomputing technologies to help them solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Enabling scalable and secure cloud agility for the modern IT era Lenovo is accelerating edge-to-cloud deployment with turnkey solutions to enable a smarter digital transformation and help customers accelerate their business. The new solutions provide pre-configured, pre-validated and cloud ready systems with built in lifecycle management to address customers’ needs. With the new Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio, businesses can use a solution to grow and manage cloud platforms at scale, while providing consistent cloud services. By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 90% of organisations will be running containerised applications. Orchestrators enable deployment automation at scale and are quickly becoming a requirement in many organisations to support the dynamic nature of modern cloud-native applications. Lenovo’s open cloud approach allows for Kubernetes platforms and application services for container orchestration and delivery of cloud-native applications, enabling greater utilisation of hardware infrastructure while improving operational efficiency. The new Lenovo ThinkAgile V3 HX, MX and VX hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are available via TruScale Infrastructure as a Service for ultimate flexibility. Customers can combine the convenience of a cloud-like experience with the security and control of traditional on-premises solutions. With Lenovo Open Cloud-Automation (LOC-A) integrated software, deployment, provisioning and managing container infrastructure becomes effortless, enabling businesses to accelerate rollout with up to 81% faster deployment than standard IT, thereby increasing the time to revenue by average of 25%. For example, the Lenovo Cloud Native Solution for VMware Tanzu on ThinkAgile VX enables organisations to run and operate modern infrastructure with stability at scale while managing containers and virtual machines from the same control plane, improving resource utilisation and shortening container development cycles. The Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio provides enhanced ThinkShield security and IT resiliency through an additional isolation layer of immunity against unauthorised access and malicious attacks. Lenovo’s Modular Root of Trust helps protect, detect and recover from cyber attacks and digital compromises with bolstered tamper detection and monitoring embedded into the chip design, while Lenovo System Guard ensures heightened security between manufacturing, delivery and deployment with advanced hardware monitoring.

Supermicro unleashes faster and greener X13 server portfolio

Supermicro is launching an extensive Tier I server and storage portfolio with more than 15 families of performance-optimised systems focusing on AI, HPC, cloud computing, media, enterprise, and 5G/telco/edge workloads. The better, faster, and greener systems deliver up to 60% better workload-optimised performance and improved security and manageability, are faster with integrated AI, storage, and cloud acceleration, and greener with high ambient temperature and liquid cooling options that reduce environmental impact and operating costs. "Supermicro's extensive portfolio of over 15 X13 server families is comprised of performance, functionality, and cost optimised designs for specific data centre and intelligent edge workloads," says Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. "Our systems with the new Intel 4th generation Xeon Scalable Processors are able to deliver new highs in both overall performance and performance per watt. In addition to the processor, every major sub-system has been dramatically upgraded with improvement in memory performance with DDR5, better I/O bandwidth w/80 lanes of PCIe Gen 5 I/O that will support higher performance accelerator cards, 400Gbps networking, and improved manageability and security. The power and cooling capabilities have also expanded to support 350W CPUs and up to 700W GPUs, and we have added both high ambient temperature operation and liquid cooling support for the new portfolio to reduce environmental impact and improve TCO.” Built into the 4th gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the accelerator engines increase efficiency and reduce CPU load for many critical workloads in today's data centres. These include Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) to accelerate deep learning inference and training performance, Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (Intel DSA) to reduce CPU overhead on storage, networking, and data-processing-intensive tasks, Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) for hardware offload of popular cryptography and data compression/decompression algorithms, and Intel AVX for vRAN to improve capacity and reduce power consumption for vRAN workloads. In addition, Supermicro servers will support the new Intel0 Data Center GPU Max Series (formerly named Ponte Vecchio) across a wide range of servers. The Intel Data Center GPU Max Series contains up to 128 Xe-HPC cores and will accelerate a range of AI, HPC, and visualisation workloads. "The new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are designed to deliver potent data infrastructure from the cloud to the network, to the intelligent edge, and help establish a new standard in data centre architecture," says Lisa Spelman, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Intel Xeon Products. "We've been collaborating with Supermicro to integrate Intel processors into their systems for almost three decades, and we are excited to see how their innovative architecture and system design will help to unleash the full potential of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors for their customers."