Blade server enclosures:
• IBM BladeCenter S™
• HP BladeSystem c3000™
• Dell PowerEdge 1955™

BladeVault™
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Thermal performance of Kell Systems ServerVault™

The effect to server operating conditions, provided that Kell Systems thermal loading and installation guidelines are adhered to, is so slight as to be insignificant.

To understand how effective the ServerVault™ thermal management system is, please consider the following example of a Kell v7.6 ServerVault™ model PSE18 enclosure's impact to server CPU temperatures, under normal "office" environmental conditions, compared to operation of those same servers in free space.

Test conditions:

Equipment used:

Kell ServerVault™: Model PSE18 v7.6, maximum recommended thermal load 1.2 kW

Server 1: HP Proliant DL380 G4 2U rack-mount servers with 2 x 3.2 GHz Intel Xeon processors

Server 2: HP Proliant DL380 G4 2U rack-mount servers with 2 x 3.2 GHz Intel Xeon processors

Server 3: HP Proliant ML370 G4 5U rack-converted server with 2 x 3.2 Intel Xeon GHz processors

Incidental hardware also present in ServerVault™ during example test:
APC Smart-UPS 3000 VA 3U rack-mount UPS
3 x Netgear network switches
2 x 1U climate monitoring devices

Test and measurement method

CPU temperature measurements were taken using HP Systems Insight Manager software

Continuous CPU loads were generated using BurnInTest software by Passmark

Room ambient temperature measurements were taken by recording the average reading of 2 x digital thermometers

Room ambient air temperature

The test room air temperature was maintained at a constant 24°C / 75°F (+/- 0.5°C) throughout the test period (equivalent to a moderately warm office).

Procedure used in example tests

In the first instance the entire outer shell of the ServerVault™ was removed, and the CPU temperatures were recorded at "idle" (running but not processing client tasks) in free air space. Removing the ServerVault™ casing created thermal conditions identical to those in a conventional open-frame rack, or with servers not rack-mounted but resting on surfaces.
Identical and continuous processing loads, generated by the test software, were applied to all six CPUs simultaneously, such that utilization in all CPUs was increased in steps from "idle" to 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. After each step change in CPU loading, CPU temperatures were allowed to stabilize for one hour, and then the operating temperature of each of the six CPUs was measured/recorded using the server manufacturer's own software.
The outer shell of the ServerVault™ was then fully reinstated, and the above test procedure was replicated.

The following results were recorded:

The average increase in CPU temperature attributable to the ServerVault™, versus free space operation, was +3.2° Celsius

The electrical consumption of the combined systems, with all CPUs at 100% utilization continuously, was 1.076 kW.

Download the ServerVault Thermal Performance Datasheet

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What They Say About Us
"The acoustic cabinet is now fully installed and the performance is terrific! It's greatly improved our office working environment and I'd happily recommend your product to others in the future. Thank you again for your assistance and excellent service."

Quenifer Lee
Director, Asia Pacific, 5+Design

"The soundproofing is extremely effective, and so is the cooling system. There was no floor space or budget for a computer room, so we used a Kell PSE instead. It takes up less floor space, it cost less, and it looks good too.";

Jason Sadler
The Geodata Institute
University of Southampton

"We recently purchased 4 Kell 38U Cabinets for 3 of our regional offices and as you can imagine we are very pleased with the purchases."

Scott Greenwood
IT Infrastructure Project Manager, Money Portal Plc

"The rack we installed was lovely, very easy to work with, and the best bit was having racked all the kit, when we closed the doors finally, absolutely everyone´s head came up because all the noise just vanished. They were most impressed"
Gordon Watson
81G.org

"The Kell rack was installed, it looks great and does the job, many thanks."

William Fullerton
Systems Administrator, Dialog Semiconductor

Very tight for space in our office, I have two people working in the same room as our computer servers. The new Kell System cabinet has eliminated all high frequency server noise and all we can hear are the low frequency fans. Kind of like the noise of our office central a/c system, nothing more or worse. This is a small room, we have no issue with sound since this cabinet arrived. The build quality is amazing.

Michael J. Kravit, AIA, NCARB, RA
President, Kravit Architectural Associates, Inc.

"When you take into account the cost of demountable partitioning and installing dedicated air conditioning, plus the hardware cost of basic data racks, we estimate that by using Kell's quiet enclosures we save approximately 59% per site, and that’s before taking into account the reduced floor space costs," said Peter Morris, Head of Towergate's property management unit. He adds "We have deployed several of these already and we're exceptionally impressed with the cooling system and the noise reduction performance. We haven't looked back on the decision."

“The soundproofing is so effective that we have staff working just 2 metres away from the fully configured server installation. The server cabinet runs very quietly and looks great, the staff don’t even notice it’s there.” says Marin Cragg, Head of Networking for the National School of Government.