Where does the Internet live?! — Open Data Center Day at GSI/FAIR
26.10.2023 |
Under the motto “Where does the Internet live?!” twenty data center operators throughout Germany invited to the Open Data Center Day (Tag der offenen Rechenzentren, TdoRZ) on September 29, 2023. The high-performance data center Green IT Cube of GSI/FAIR also participated in the event and welcomed interested people as well as a school class.
The Green IT Cube is an environmentally friendly high-performance data center with a special cooling system. The generated heat is dissipated through water cooling on the racks’ back doors and supplies an adjacent canteen and office building with heat. The company NDC-Garbe, the cooperation partner for the Cube concept, represented by Managing Director Peter Pohlschröder, was also available on the day of the event to answer visitors' questions.
By dispensing with complex cooling of the high-volume room air and instead using an innovative water cooling system, the energy required for cooling is reduced to about one tenth compared to conventional data centers (PUE≈1.07). With half the floor height, the computer cabinets can be arranged much more densely, as in a high-bay warehouse, which reduces investment costs. For its special environmental friendliness, the Green IT Cube received, among other awards, the Blue Angel, the Federal German Government's eco label.
In the framework of the visit, participants were also able to take part in a virtual reality experience: The company DC Smarter allowed to test its DC Vision® solution. By combining a digital twin with augmented reality, the software optimizes key data center tasks such as remote hands services, documentation management and visual inspections.
The implementation of the DC Vision® solution is part of the living lab Digital Open Lab of GSI/FAIR. In the future, among the research and development projects to be carried out via the Digital Open Lab will be those on the more sustainable operation of data centers, together with industrial partners. Likewise, partners from the scientific environment have the opportunity to use the data center for their research work.
Data centers are unfamiliar places to most people, so the question “Where does the Internet live?” is a valid one. The TdoRZ was the culmination of the awareness campaign of the same name initiated by the German Datacenter Association (GDA), the representative body of the data center industry in Germany. The association actively invited all data center operators in Germany to join the initiative and open their doors on September 29.
Twenty data center operators in 16 German cities across the country opened their doors. Guided tours gave interested parties the opportunity to find out what goes on in data centers and what central importance they have for modern life.(CP)
