Do you remember our Housewarming Party at the Eurotheum in November 2017? There we celebrated the opening of our new data center location in the heart of Frankfurt am Main with our customers, partners, friends, interested parties and - of course - colleagues and gave everyone a look behind the scenes of our new green location.
But even though it was a bit quieter after that, behind the scenes we continued to develop and optimise our software and hardware with a lot of passion in order to reach the next milestone in this project. The goal was the launch of our Public Cloud on 31 March 2018 - because our customers should get the best possible and comprehensive cloud experience right from the start.
After four months of hard work, we can now proudly say: Mission accomplished! As planned, the cloud went live smoothly last Saturday at the Eurotheum and is now fully available to our customers.
First cloud customer with a focus on sustainability
One customer that has been hosting with us from the beginning is the Technical University of Dresden with the BMVI-funded research project "Movebis" (pronounced mo-weh-bis), which is being carried out by the chairs of Transport Ecology and Computer nNtworks together with Climate Alliance. Movebis comes from Latin and means "you will move" - and that describes the goal pretty well. Nationwide, a unique database on cycling is to be created and then evaluated. From the movement and sensor data that cyclists provide via their smartphones, municipalities will later be able to draw conclusions about ways to optimise the cycling infrastructure. The data is collected as part of the annual "STADTRADELN" campaigns of the Climate Alliance, which has been running a competition for ten years to determine the most cycling-active municipality in Germany with the aim of avoiding CO2.
However, such a project poses major challenges for data processing. For example, a flexible solution is needed that can be adapted to changing conditions: "We have a potentially very large user base whose data is to be stored and processed. However, we do not yet know the exact number of users of the smartphone app. That's why we opted for a cloud solution that can be scaled as needed," says Philipp Grubitzsch, project staff member at the Chair of Computer Networks, summarising the challenges.
High legal requirements are also placed on the processing of personal data, such as that generated when recording motion sequences: "Data protection was another reason for us to use a German cloud provider. TU Dresden has to comply with the very strict Saxon Data Protection Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation, which will soon come into force".
Last but not least, the TU Dresden team was also attracted by the idea of saving CO2, which is achieved in the modern and very energy-efficient data centre in the Eurotheum. Philipp Grubitzsch reveals further: "This fitted perfectly with the main goal of the Climate Alliance's STADTRADELN campaign, as part of which we collect the data in the Movebis project."
Water cooling enables energy efficiency and low costs
Because: The innovative hot water direct cooling system from Cloud&Heat is also used in the Eurotheum data centre. Thanks to it, the heat from the processors in the servers does not go unused. The water heated to up to 60 °C can be fed directly into the hot water and heating circuits of the high-rise building. This saves in several ways: on the one hand, cooling costs that would otherwise be incurred in cooling the servers, and heating costs for the recipient of the waste heat - and thus a lot of energy. For example, the hotel guests of the Meliá INNSIDE , which is located on the upper floors of the Frankfurt high-rise, are supplied with hot water and heating energy.
"We are delighted that we are now live with our green data centre. Here we offer an innovative, future-proof cloud concept that is unique in terms of data protection and security, but also in terms of sustainability - and this is very well received by our customers," says Nicolas Röhrs, Managing Director of Cloud&Heat Technologies. "We are delighted that the next milestone in Cloud&Heat's #futureofcompute approach has been reached and that we can now further develop the project together with our customers.
