HighPoint's ultra-fast 8-slot NVMe Gen4 RAID card compliant with immersion-cooled servers

HighPoint has just announced that its SSD7540 RAID AIC is now qualified to be used with LiquidCool Solutions' immersion-cooling rack servers as well as immersion-cooled server platforms in general.

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What does this mean? What's immersion cooling? Why does an SSD RAID AIC need that? Immersion cooling is a style of liquid cooling that submerges either most, or the entire PC in a non-conductive liquid, usually mineral oil. This is for aesthetics and sometimes, cooling efficiency, and sometimes both.

In the data center business, where there will be multiple fully-decked systems stacked on top of one another, immersion cooling becomes a savior in cooling servers. HighPoint's SSD7540 RAID AIC is the first to be submerged into the world of immersion cooling, so it'll be interesting to see a data center do this and show some results of the improvements using immersion-cooled RAID AICs with 8 x SSDs per card (and multiple of these cards installed, by the way).

Proposed Solution: Immersion Cooled Rack Server for Challenging Environments

LiquidCool Solutions was contracted to develop a rack-server platform equipped with M.2 NVMe RAID storage capable of performing optimally in a hot, dusty environment. The SSD7540 robust feature suite made it a compelling candidate for platform. However, the AIC was developed for conventional air-cooled environments, and had not been qualified for platforms designed to operate in extreme conditions.

Unlike a standard rack server, which relies on conventional cooling fans or liquid-cooled heat exchangers, and draws air from the working environment, the hardware componentry of an immersion server is fully submerged in an electrically non-conductive liquid within a sealed chassis. The proposed NVMe component would need to function flawlessly under these conditions.

In order to determine the SSD7540's suitability for the customer environment, a series of rigorous I/O and file transfer tests were conducted using two test platforms; a control/baseline server that utilized a standard air-cooled chassis, and the customer's proposed immersion cooled platform. The results of testing sessions were analyzed to determine the SSD7540's suitability for the customer environment, with a particular focus on hardware integrity and transfer capabilities.

Fully Qualified for an Immersion Cooled Environment: SSD7540 proved fully capable of operating in the uniquely challenging server environment, and exhibited no signs of physical or performance degradation. M.2 NVMe media hosted by the SSD7540 benefitted from the significantly improved thermal management and the AIC was able to maintain a high level of sustained transfer throughput under load in the liquid-cooled chassis. LiquidCool Solutions determined that the SSD7540 was the right tool for the job, and incorporated the AIC into finished solution, which has been successfully deployed in the field.