Emerson Liebert XD Pumping Chiller Units, Liebert XD Refrigerant-Based Cooling Modules Case Studies

Customer Success

A
from the Experts in
Business-Critical Continuity™

Background

HESS increasingly depends on technology to support oil
exploration and production. When the company first transitioned
from mainframe to blade server technology for its most intense
processing tasks, the raised floor system provided adequate but
limited cooling. When HESS added a second blade server cluster,
data center managers saw that they needed a more flexible and
scalable approach to cooling.

Case Summary

HESS Corporation

HESS Corporation is a leading
global independent energy
company engaged in the
exploration and production
of crude oil and natural gas,
as well as in refining and selling
refined petroleum products,
natural gas, and electricity.
Headquartered in New York, the

Location: Houston, Texas

Products/Services:

ebert XDO Overhead Fan Coils

•Li

•Liebert XDC Chiller

•Liebert Deluxe Precision Air Conditioners

•Liebert Series 600 and Liebert Series 610 UPS
rt PPC Precision Power Centers

ebe

•Li

•Liebert SiteScan Web

Critical Needs: Support uninterrupted operation of expanding

high-performance computing center performing geophysical
modeling for petroleum exploration.

Results

Temperature maintained at a stable 60 degrees in a zone
containing 1,000 Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart Servers.

Flawless performance of power and cooling infrastructure

delivers 100 percent uptime.

company has operations in the
United States, United Kingdom,
Norway, Denmark, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Azerbaijan,
Thailand and Indonesia. It
produces more than 350,000
barrels of oil annually.

Real-time data from comprehensive monitoring solution
enables preventive maintenance and proactive

e changes.

tur

u

or f

g f

annin

l

p

The Situation

With a goal of replacing 100 percent of its petroleum
reserves annually, HESS directs more than 95
percent of its total capital expenditures to
exploration, development and production activities.
After evaluating hundreds of opportunities, the
company drills approximately 15 oil wells per year.

Traditionally a high-stakes guessing game, oil
exploration today uses technology to improve the
odds of success. At its Houston, Texas, offices, HESS
maintains a 20,000-square-foot data center servicing

eismic processing needs of its global exploration

the s
and production operation. This data center processes
huge amounts of raw seismic data, collected
worldwide, to help determine the presence and
location of oil deposits. Creating the three-dimensional
models used by geoscientists to find oil and gas in
hard-to-reach underwater areas requires massive
computing power.

ven time, the data center processes

y gi

t an

A
1,500 Terabytes (TB) of active data via Linux clusters
operating on blade-server arrays. The company’s
processing needs have grown by 25 percent per year
for the past few years, and managers expect similar

wth in the years to come.

o

gr

The data center’s computer hardware evolved rapidly
from large mainframes only a few years ago to today's

uted arrays of 1,000 blade servers. This increased

ib

tr

is

d
computing capacity supports more precise modeling

ormations and increased accuracy in

all

y d

cal f

c support infrastructure.

ami

yn

f geologi

o
identifying potential oil and gas deposits. The
continued evolution of the hardware requires an

u

eq

A Customer Success
from the Experts in

usiness-Critical Continuity™

B

“People often underestimate the power and cooling

demands of high-density equipment. Those 1,000
blade servers draw 360 kW of power and put out
104 tons of heat in 2,000 square feet.”

Michael Musgrove, supervisor of Computer Operations,
HESS’s Exploration & Production Division

“I always have to be prepared for change,” says Michael

ve, supervisor of Computer Operations for

o

gr

s

Mu
HESS’s Exploration & Production division. “We could
decide tomorrow that we need to add another
1,000-server array.”

s with m

A

ught somewhat off guard by blade servers’ heat

ca

an

nter managers, Musgrove was

e

a c

t

a

y d

output. “The vendors of these high-density servers
don’t always tell you up front how much heat they

ut and how much power they draw,”

ck o

y ki

all

e

r
he says. “It’s been a learning curve.”

SS installed its first supercomputing cluster,

n HE

Whe
Musgrove attempted to turbo-charge his existing
raised floor cooling systems. “We installed Plexiglas