An Advanced Mechanical and Thermal Design Optimal For High Density Storage Server Reliability

With rapid growth of large-scale data centers in data centric world nowadays, high density large capability distributed storage systems have been becoming one of core ingredients in modern Cloud Service Provider (CSP) data centers. Performance, power, and reliability are three main metrics for service level agreement (SLA) of the distributed storage applications such as big data, disaster backup and recovery, as well as hybrid storage cloud. Weight of such three metrics for different applications varies. Therefore, optimal balance of performance, power and reliability is critical for a competitive storage server to efficiently address the demand of specific applications.This paper introduces an advanced high-density storage server designed by Kuaishou with up to 42 pcs 3.5-inch HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) in conventional 2U server space with novel mechanical and thermal solution, while most of storage severs deployed nowadays can only support 12 pcs 3.5-inch HDDs in 2U space. Having 2U space maximized for 42 pcs HDDs, HDDs placements changed from the front to inside of chassis, which results in the issue of HDDs inconvenient or non-operational maintenance (replacement or hot-plug), and the risk of HDDs reliability and performance degradation and thermal concern of HDDs preheated. To address such challenges, the novel push-pull with rotation mechanical design, the advanced system design for RVI (rotation vibration isolation) as well as the optimal air duct thermal design are created and implemented in this high-density storage system. Engineering lab validation result and data center deployment data are also summarized in the paper.