It was inaugurated on April 16th new room of the Green data center of theUniversity of Pisawhich makes the structure the largest university data center in Italyas well as being the only one to have obtained the ‘A’ classification from AgID.
At the forefront in Europe, expanded, strengthened and sustainablethe data center has thus doubled its capacity by making it available to the Pisan University community 38 additional rackswhich added to the 66 already present lead to a total of 104significantly increasing the computing capacity available for scientific research at Unipi.
“The University of Pisa aspires to one cutting-edge position in the development of digitalisation processesnecessary to better face the new challenges regarding training, research and technological transfer – commented the rector of the university, Riccardo Zucchi -. In this, the investment made in the University’s Green data center is strategic for us. The expansion of this structure, in fact, allows us to make a leap in quality in high-level competitive projects and in frontier contexts, such as 5GL’Artificial intelligenceThe quantum computing or the theme ofhigh performance computing in the context of the National Center financed in the PNRR”.
“A university-level data center is one a fundamental competitive tool for research in science and engineering – explained the vice-rector of the University of Pisa, Giuseppe Iannaccone -. If well managed, it is the most efficient solution from an operational and economic point of view, while from an environmental point of view it is superior to a situation in which the resources are distributed among the various laboratories of the university”.
The expansion of the Green data center will in fact allow significantly increase the computing power available for scientific research of UniPi which, currently, can already count on around 700 nodes for a total of around 30K computing cores and more than 100 GPUs of various generations. But the strengthening of the university data center will have positive impacts also on the territory. All with one strong attention to environmental sustainability.
“With the development of the University’s Green data center, our ability to support the digitalisation processes is also strengthened, not only of the University but also of the territory, consolidating what is the ‘UniPi model’ of digital transition, in which the our university puts its infrastructures and strong skills in the ICT field are available to the territory – declared the rector’s delegate for the digital transition, Giuseppe Anastasi -. The strengthening of the data center can in fact guarantee new digital services from which not only the academic community but also the local area can benefit, thus laying the foundations for increasingly sustainable, widespread, inclusive, effective and participatory development”.
“Recent studies show how data centers benefit the growth of the territory and its GDP (in 2022 alone the number grew by 22%) – finally declared the president of the university IT system, Antonio Cisternino -. It is important that these infrastructures are present and help not only the teaching and research of the University, but also to develop the territory through the availability of innovative infrastructures and collaborations. Finally, it should be underlined that data centers are also becoming artificial intelligence engines and they were baptized too AI Factories“.
“The main objective of the Green data center expansion project – explained the CTO of the data center, Maurizio Davini – was to integrate new technological elements without distorting the original project, designed for have the lowest possible environmental impact. Thanks to the new solutions adopted, the Green data center is thus able to support High-performance computing (HPC) and latest generation Artificial Intelligence infrastructures for the next few years, limiting energy consumption”.
To do this, they were appropriately chosen innovative liquid cooling solutions like Liebert XDU’s Vertiv or the HyperCool solution from Zutacore which allow the implementation of liquid cooling even in existing data centers with air cooling. It was thus possible to also adopt latest generation calculation systems like the Lenovo Neptune, which guarantees a reduction of energy consumption by up to 40%. without having to sacrifice performance. Furthermore, the University of Pisa was among the first in Europe to adopt these technological solutions, making its Green data center a cutting-edge structure also from the point of view of environmental sustainability.
Finally, the high-speed internal and external connectivity and high reliability of the structure. “Thanks to the activation of a second connection node to the new generation ultra-broadband national network (GARR-T), dedicated to the education and research community, the scientific computing power of our University Green data center has increased enormously – he explains Stefano Suin, director of the digital infrastructure directorate of the University of Pisa -. Today, in fact, this structure can count on one internal connectivity at 200 Gbit/sec it’s a external 100 Gbit/sec which allows you to fully exploit its potential in terms of access to High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence systems and deliverability based on the needs of each project; without forgetting the due attention to the protection of data and research results”.
Below, the video of the inauguration of Unipi’s expanded Green Data Center.
