Hp Parsec Architecture; Parallel - HP Xw460c - ProLiant - Blade Workstation Overview

To overcome these issues in the c7000 enclosure, HP engineers designed a new type of fan that
delivers high airflow and high pressure in a small form factor that can scale to meet future cooling
needs. HP has 20 patents pending for its Active Cool fan technology and implementation.
HP Active Cool 200 fans can cool 16 server blades using as little as 150 watts of power. Active Cool
200 fans use ducted fan technology with a high-performance motor and impeller to deliver high CFM
at high pressure (Figure 13). The fan includes a bell mouth inlet with a specially designed impeller
and a stator section that also provides cooling fins for the motor and acoustic treatments at the rear of
the fan. This design provides cooling capacity to support blade products beyond current roadmaps.
The fan's unique shape generates high-volume, high-pressure airflow at even the slowest fan speeds,
with low noise levels and minimal power consumption.
Figure 13. Ducted fan cross-section and ducted fan blade compared to traditional server fan
Active Cool 200 fans are controlled by the BladeSystem Onboard Administrator, which can ramp
cooling capacity up or down based on system needs. Along with optimizing the airflow, the control
algorithm optimizes the acoustic levels and power consumption. As a result, the c7000 enclosure can
accommodate full-featured servers that are 60% more dense than traditional rack-mount servers, while
the Active Cool 200 fans consume only 50% of the power typically required and use 30% less
airflow. As new Active Cool fans are introduced, they may not interoperate with Active Cool 200
fans. The BladeSystem Onboard Administrator will indicate a fan compatibility problem if mixed fans
that are not interoperable are detected in an enclosure.

HP PARSEC architecture

The c7000 enclosure uses PARSEC architecture—parallel, redundant, scalable, enclosure-based
cooling.

Parallel

In this context, parallel means that fresh, cool air flows over all the blades (in the front of the
enclosure) and all the interconnect modules (in the back of the enclosure). The enclosure is divided
into four cooling zones with fans in each. The Active Cool 200 fans provide cooling for their own
zone and redundant cooling for the rest of the enclosure. To ensure scalability, HP designed both the
fans and the power supplies with enough capacity to meet the needs of compute, storage, and I/O
components well into the future.
To optimize thermal design, HP developed a relatively airtight center air plenum, or air chamber. In
the c7000 enclosure, all device bays include a shutoff door that is normally closed to prevent air
leakage through that device bay. When a server blade is inserted, it seals into the center air plenum
21