All Quiet in the Data Center

What most IT professionals that spend their time in the data center really want for the holidays is a little peace and quiet, especially the quiet. As anybody who has spent any time at all in a sizable data center knows, the noise levels can be deafening. With all the fans in hundreds of servers working overtime to keep systems cool, the decibel levels get pretty high very quickly. That’s why data centers go through so many ear plugs in a year.

But one thing that is sure to be on everybody in the data center's holiday wish list is new noise reduction equipment from Silentium. Based in Israel, Silentium markets active noise cancellation technology in an appliance that takes up about 4u of space.

According to Silentium CEO Yossi Barath, the company has already established relationships with Hewlett-Packard and the Knurr division of Emerson Network Power. Longer term, Barath says he expects server vendors to embed the Silentium technology inside their servers. But in the meantime, data center managers can deploy the Silentium appliance on their own using an S-Cube Development Kit.

Barath thinks the biggest demand for his appliance will come from scenarios that require servers to be deployed outside the data center. That may be the case. But one thing is for sure, the people working inside the data center sure wish they could hear themselves think sometimes.