THE REAL-ESTATE SAVINGS IT managers get from ultra-dense servers and storage are often consumed by higher electricity bills. Dense systems not only cost more per rack unit to power up, they also cost more to keep cool.

A new Hewlett-Packard (HP) cooling system introduced last month should help to alleviate that problem. Called the Modular Cooling System (MCS), the $30,500 unit relies on chilled water to cool the components within the rack, and captures and recirculates warm air.

With MCS, HP estimates that it can cool up to 30,000 watts of power per rack, roughly twice the maximum wattage of competitive systems, says Paul Perez, VP of storage, networking and infrastructure for HP's industry standard servers group.

The cooling system fits on HP's new line of racks, the 10000 G2 Universal Rack, which supports the company's entire line of rack-mount servers and storage, including its StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA), Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) and XP storage arrays.

--Alex Barrett