Panduit Corp released a new Net-Access Server Cabinet System that features IBM’s Rear Door Heat Exchanger Water-Cooling Technology. It uses a five-inch deep cooling door that uses chilled water to dissipate heat generated from the servers. It does not utilize any other cooling system and can reduce server heat output by up to 55%.

Water cooling has existed for desktops for a while now, but has not been used in the server environment. As far as noise is concerned, they are great because they make almost little to no noise compared to the very loud fans that are often found in servers. According to a Gartner report, water can carry 3,500 times more heat than air at sea level which can significantly improve the temperature of datacenters with more cooling efficiency.

Cooling a server is the biggest concern for corporations and the energy necessary to cool the servers is one of the biggest costs. By having energy efficient cooling, it can save a significant amount of power and costs. Datacenters have become a topic of attention because of all the energy that is used to maintain these large environments. Big corporations such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have taken measures in increasing their environmental responsibility. It will be interesting to see the technology that these companies will come up with that other companies will take advantage of.