Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Brandon Aaron Rubenstein

Husam Atallah Alissa

Christian L Belady

Mark Edward Shaw

Sean Michael James

Sriram Sankar

Bryan David Kelly

Shaun L Harris

Bharath Ramakrishnan

John Joseph Siegler

Robert Jason Lankston

Scot Edward Heath

Roy Medhi Zeighami

Gregory Joseph McKnight

Sriram Govindan

Badriddine Khessib

Jeffrey Taylor Stellman

Brian A Janous

Osvaldo Patricio Morales

Lawrence Dale Cannon

Adolfo Bravo Ferreira

Michele Falcon

Gregory Joseph Mcknight

Techniques for controlling cooling of electronic components in computing facilities are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a method includes detecting a pressure drop of a coolant flowing across multiple servers in an enclosure between the inlet and outlet manifolds and a supply temperature of the coolant at the inlet manifold. The method further includes automatically adjust operations of the pump to maintain the calculated pressure drop at or near a pressure-drop setpoint while automatically adjusting operations of the air mover to maintain the supply temperature at or near a temperature setpoint.

Control systems for air-assisted and liquid-cooled enclosures

An electrical connector for transmitting electrical power includes at least one power pin with an ablative tip. The power pin has a body oriented in a direction of a longitudinal axis, and the ablative tip is at a terminal end along the longitudinal axis. The ablative tip includes a terminal edge and a support material positioned on a transverse side of the terminal edge that provides structural support to the terminal edge.

Systems and methods for improving safety on electronic device connections

Air quality inside a computing device is monitored utilizing an air quality monitor that can be sized to simulate a server computing device and can have multiple sensing equipment mounted inside, including equipment to detect corrosive aspects in the air and condensation sensing equipment to detect instances in which condensation can form on computing device hardware. Corrosion sensing can include metallic members that can be electrically coupled to voltage that can induce a current within the metallic members, thereby more accurately simulating the corrosion of operating PCBs. Condensation sensing can include condensation hosting members that can have a thermal mass that is approximately equal to the thermal mass of PCBs and can include heating elements by which the condensation hosting members can more accurately simulate the thermal effects and aspects of operating PCBs, and also moisture detectors, including electrical and optical moisture detectors. Additionally, an off-gassing chamber can be included.

Internal server air quality station

A rack acclimating device can accelerate the acclimation of an already assembled rack of computing equipment to an environment. A rack acclimating device can comprise one or more heating elements and an air moving device that can be oriented to move air across the heating elements and then through the rack of computing equipment. Additionally, the rack acclimating device can comprise a controller or other like computing device that can receive environmental sensor data and, based upon the received environmental sensor data, can control the heating elements and air moving device. Environmental sensor data can be received from environmental sensors, such as temperature and/or humidity sensors, which can be positioned to sense various environmental aspects. A rack acclimating device can also comprise a hood or other like structure to confine and direct the heated air from the heating elements and/or air moving device to the computer equipment rack.

Accelerated rack acclimator

A fan failure detection and reporting system organizes fans having similar characteristics into groups. The system establishes, for a given fan group, one or more reference characteristics and identifies, for each reference characteristic, a measure of tolerance. The system identifies as a problem fan a fan having a performance characteristic, obtained via monitoring, which exceeds a corresponding reference characteristic for the group to which the fan belongs by the measure of tolerance for the corresponding reference characteristic, and generates a notification that at least identifies the problem fan. In embodiments, the system is capable of determining the fan characteristics that are used for grouping and for identifying problem fans by monitoring the fans during operation thereof. Consequently, the system is capable of detecting problem fans even when the system initially has limited or no knowledge concerning the fans.

Fan failure detection and reporting

Aspects extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for balancing input phases across server rack power supplies. A rack manager can monitor individual Alternating Current (AC) phase currents at the rack level. The rack manager knows (or can at least determine) which power supplies are connected to which phase. The rack manager can micro adjust individual PSU output voltages to balance current phases at the rack level. Balancing can occur in response to changed server workloads, hot-unplug of one or more servers, etc. When there is one PSU per server, phase balancing can be accomplished by connecting outputs of power supplies together via busbar or wire. Output voltages of individual power supplies can be adjusted to achieve better phase balancing. Phase imbalance can be corrected by a bus bar or wire carrying enough load to correct phase imbalance.

Balancing input phases across server rack power supplies

Cable management systems, devices, and associated methods of installation and operation are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, an enclosure for holding computer components includes a front panel, a back panel, and a side panel between the front panel and the back panel. The side panel has a first side facing an interior space of the enclosure and a second side facing away from the first side. The enclosure also includes a guide panel proximate to the side panel, the guide panel being spaced apart from the second side of the side panel by a gap extending at least partially between the front panel and the back panel. The enclosure also includes a cable anchor located in the gap between the side panel and the guide panel.

Cable management techniques for computing systems

A heat transfer device is described. In one or more implementations, a device includes a housing that is moveable through a plurality of orientations involving at least two dimensions during usage, a heat-generating device disposed within the housing, and a heat transfer device disposed within the housing. The heat transfer device has a plurality of heat pipes configured to transfer heat using thermal conductivity and phase transition from the heat-generating device, the plurality of heat pipes arranged to provide generally uniform heat transfer from the heat-generating device during movement of the housing through the plurality of orientations.

Heat transfer device

Management of infrastructure devices is performed by computing devices that are associated with the processing being provided by the data center, such as chassis managers. A master is first selected through polling or consensus algorithms, and then subsequently the master is endowed with the authority to manage infrastructure devices and generate the control output to such infrastructure devices. Alternatively, no master need be elected and, instead, output to such infrastructure devices is generated by a computing device selected utilizing polling or consensus algorithms, and in accordance with a management decision made through polling or consensus algorithms. The interplay between the cooling apparatuses of individual server computing devices and the cooling apparatuses of the data center as a whole is also managed to increase the portion of the cooling of server computing devices provided by data center air movers. Control of data center air movers can be determined empirically or predictively.

Datacenter and cooling control fault-tolerance using compute resources

A self-powered processing device comprises both a processing device and a power generator that are physically, electrically, and thermally coupled to one another. The power generator can be a fuel cell that can be manufactured from materials that can also support processing circuitry, such as silicon-based materials. A thermal coupling between the power generator and the processing device can include a thermoelectric either generating electrical power from the temperature differential or consuming electrical power to generate a temperature differential. A computing device with self-powered processing devices also includes energy storage devices to store excess energy produced by the self-powered processing device and provide it back during times of need. The self-powered processing device comprises either a wireless or wired network connection, the latter being connectable to a slot on a backplane that can aggregate multiple self-powered processing devices and provide fuel delivery paths for them.

On-chip integrated processing and power generation

Climate regulation within an enclosure (e.g., a server cabinet) may involve a climate regulator device that reports a set of available settings (e.g., fan speeds of a fan array) to a computational unit that selects among the available settings. However, such techniques involve bidirectional communication between the climate regulator device and a computational unit that is capable of utilizing the device-specific settings. Presented herein are climate regulation architectures involving a request from the computational unit as a climate target that is independent of the settings of the climate regulator devices (e.g., an selection on an arbitrary scale from 0 to 100). A climate regulator controller may map the device-independent climate target to a selection among the available settings of the particular climate regulator device(s). Further variations may involve conflict resolution among requests from different computational sub-units, and/or failsafe mechanisms such as default climate regulator device settings to alleviate controller failure.

Setting-independent climate regulator control

A data center is cooled through hydronic convection mechanisms, geothermal mechanisms or combinations thereof. The individual computing devices of such a data center are cooled through a thermally conductive interface with a liquid. The liquid's container can extend to a cooling apparatus located physically above such computing devices to provide hydronic convection cooling, or it can extend into the earth, either in the form of a heat pipe, or in the form of conduits through which the liquid is actively pumped. The hydronic convection cooling and geothermal heat pipe cooling operate via temperature differentials and consume no external electrical power. Geothermal cooling avoids heat soak by utilizing multiple different sets of conduits extending into the earth, where at least some of those sets of conduits are not utilized for a period of time. Combinations of hydronic convection mechanisms and geothermal cooling can also be utilized.

Renewable energy based datacenter cooling

A self-supporting server chassis accepts blade server computing devices, and other like computing devices and associated infrastructure hardware, and also provides structural support for vertical stacking of such self-supporting server chassis, thereby eliminating the need for conventional racks. Internal support structures, such as rails, holes and standoffs, accept and provide physical support for the computing devices and other infrastructure hardware. Vertical stacking support structures provide physical stability and rigidity for stacking multiple self-supporting server chassis in a vertical direction, and allow interconnection among self-supporting server chassis. Stacks of self-supporting server chassis can comprise a base member with casters or other like transportation hardware, as well as a top member that provides further structural stability and rigidity, as well as providing cooling and airflow benefits, such as airflow containment. Ranking hardware in the self-supporting server chassis accommodates computing devices and infrastructure hardware that were designed for installation into a traditional rack.

Rackless computing equipment construction

A heat transfer device is described. In one or more implementations, a heat transfer device includes a heat sink and a thermal storage enclosure disposed proximal to at least a portion of the heat sink. The thermal storage enclosure configured to be disposed proximal to a heat-generating component of a device. The thermal storage enclosure includes a phase change material configured to have a melting temperature that is below a temperature at which a cooling fan of the device is set to operate to cool the heat-generating device.

Growing community of inventors

Lynnwood, WA, United States of America

Brandon Aaron Rubenstein