NEWS IN BRIEF
11
New Platform
for Micro
Data Centre
and Edge
Computing
Data centre in a wind turbine wins
German Data Centre Award
Constructing power-intensive data centres where electricity can be obtained on a
climate-friendly basis, for example in wind turbines has been the idea of WindCORES
for a couple of years now. On 11 April, a new project called WindCORES++, which
was developed in cooperation between WestfalenWIND IT, Rittal and SICP, won in
Category 1 of the German Data Centre Award in the ‘Ideas and research in relation
to data centres’ for cloud hosting category.
This time, the prize, which has been awarded for pioneering ideas and solutions
aimed at increasing energy efficiency in data centres for the last nine years, was
handed over at a ceremony in Flörsheim am Main. The expert jury was particularly
impressed by the new solution’s combination of cost-effectiveness and sustainability.
It obtains over 90% wind power and uses synergy effects to comprehensively save
resources. Because it is installed and integrated into wind turbines, it harnesses exist-
ing infrastructures and buildings, such as the tower or the existing power grid.
The colocation solution shows how as many as 50 IT racks to be used for cloud op-
eration can be installed in just one wind turbine which means it makes better use of
the space available as the racks are installed on several storeys. This compact instal-
lation raises the cost-effectiveness per wind energy turbine significantly. The solution
also delivers further benefits in terms of scalability, risk reduction or needs-based
equipment with access systems. It can, therefore, accommodate the requirements of
companies, administrations or system houses more cost-effectively and sustainably
if they want to move their IT system to a different location or have it operated by a
third-party provider. n
www.networkseuropemagazine.com
R&M is launching a ready-for-
connection micro data centre
called EdgeGo Basic. It’s intended
to be used as a platform to be able
to provide infrastructures for edge
computing in next to no time. With
EdgeGo, R&M is supporting the
current trend for creating compact,
high-performance data centre
infrastructure on the edge of the
cloud. Here providers, companies,
utilities and cities all over the
world are installing large numbers
of additional edge data centres,
which means they’re creating
cloud-like, autonomous computing
performance.
They need them to be able to
operate particularly security, time
and company critical as well as
bandwidth-greedy applications.
If massive quantities of data had
to be processed latency-free, the
transmission path to a central
hyperscale data centre would often
be too long and too expensive.
Use cases of edge computing
include 5G services, autonomous
driving and production, artificial
intelligence for buildings and
machines, medical technology,
trade, augmented reality,
blockchain, smart city and smart
grid.
EdgeGo has the dimensions
of a rack with 42 height units,
and the cabinet is soundproof;
EdgeGo reduces the noise of the
active equipment by 31 dBA.
That corresponds to 99.9% of the
typical emissions of IT devices.
This means EdgeGo is particularly
suitable for noise-sensitive
environments. A temperature-
regulated controller controls
the speed of the ventilators.
With active cooling attaining a
performance of 12 kW, this a best
in industry figure, and the capacity
of the passive cooling is 2.75 kW. n