A lot of new hardware features were rolled up into Dell’s PowerEdge 11G servers, which came out in 2009 and were enhanced throughout 2010.
But up until now, Dell has not discussed an important feature of the plain vanilla PowerEdge servers that it has kept in its back pocket in reserve as it did further testing: They can run hot for a period of time and not fry themselves.
Many small and medium businesses, who often put servers in the most unlikely of places, already know this, but Dell has done years of design and testing on the components in selected models of the PowerEdge 11G machines so it can not only certify that the machines can run at a substantially higher temperature and humidity levels than are in the spec sheets, but also keep them under the same Dell warranty.
This has some important implications for customers who want to run their data centers a little hotter to save money on cooling and is particularly interesting for those shops who want to use free-air cooling by opening up the walls of their data centers and throwing out their expensive chillers.
Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot: Insert “nice rack” joke here
Eric Wilcox, power and cooling product manager for the PowerEdge servers at Dell, tells El Reg that the plain vanilla PowerEdge machines (as distinct from the PowerEdge-C cloud servers that are only sold on a bespoke basis) are rated to handle as much as 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and an 85 per cent relative humidity level.