On 09/04/2012 12:54 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: > Hydrogen is cheaper than He and works even better. Just make sure you don't > have any air leaks in (i.e. keep a bit of positive pressure). For the > "server farm in a container" model, this would work just fine.. leaks would > just float up into the atmosphere.
This is one of those eyebrow-raising suggestions because it is so enticing and yet so much could go wrong. I guess if you had your crates in places that didn't have earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, extreme winds, snow, freezing rain, recently fired computer programmers from Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc with access to high-powered rifles and armour-piercing bullets, a guaranteed surplus of hydrogen to continue positive pressure and you separated the containers pretty far apart, it /might/ be safe. There are probably a dozen other ways things could go amiss with Hydrogen, but these are just the few ways I came up with off the top of my head and without a physical sciences background. One big concern from my perspective is replacing equipment in these boxes. Maybe the whole thing is just built, sealed for good, primed with hydrogen, started, allowed to slowly degrade over time and finally tossed when the still working equipment is sufficiently dated? Not sure if the cost/benefit works out for this case. Switches at least would definitely need to be outside the box. I know we've been taking things to the uber-scale level with this conversation, but does anyone have suggestions for small (homebrew Beowulf) clusters? I've considered oil before, but for all the capillary concerns voiced in this list have avoided it. I would consider a reasonable gas (NOT hydrogen) if one could be suggested along with a feasible way to keep that gas in a small rack or similar structure, or an alternative to oil if a nicer one (albeit not as efficient) could similarly be suggested. Perhaps air or piped water-cooling is indeed my best bet. Best, ellis _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
