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Hydrogen Racing Team (Students Delft University of Technology) Moves Its IT Infrastructure to Greenhouse Datacenters’ Flagship Facility
April 2021 by Marc Jacob
Forze Hydrogen Racing, the hydrogen electric racing team comprised of students from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), has moved its whole IT infrastructure to a co-located environment in Greenhouse Datacenters’ flagship data center in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands. Previously, the team had its IT infrastructure located at the university campus. Greenhouse provides Forze with a colocation offering that features an extremely energy efficient PUE figure of 1.15, matching Forze’s drive to make the world a better place through sustainability and better energy sources.
Forze Hydrogen Racing is the high-tech hydrogen racing team of students of Delft University of Technology. Forze is one of only two hydrogen racing teams worldwide, participating in the ‘traditional’ gasoline-powered Dutch Supercar Challenge.
The Forze team consists of over sixty TU Delft students in changing composition, of which 25 each year take a gap year. The team has been working on developing hydrogen-powered racecars since 2007. Their goal is to promote a shift towards clean transportation in the future, with pure water as the only emission.
Greenhouse offers the team rack space in their DC2 facility in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands. Apart from the energy efficient Power Usage Effectiveness figure of 1.15, Greenhouse DC2 offers ample international and regional connectivity options including carriers and IXs, cloud onramps, zero-latency links with the Internet hub in Amsterdam, 24/7 engineering support onsite, and more.
Server Cluster and NAS
The migration of Forze’s cluster of servers to the Greenhouse flagship colocation data center in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands, is now completed. Forze’s IT infrastructure includes the server cluster with immense computational power and also a comprehensive Network Attached Storage (NAS) platform with a large number of hard disk drives (HDDs).
“The new co-located data center environment in Greenhouse’s flagship colocation facility is a strong improvement with our previous situation. It’s not far away from the university campus in Delft actually, only a half hour drive,” says Martijn Loonen, Chief Aerodynamics at Forze Hydrogen Racing. “Greenhouse has built an impressive greenfield data center facility in Naaldwijk, with extremely energy efficient operations which seamlessly fits in with our own sustainability drives and goals. The previous cabinet lay-out at the TU Delft university campus was a bit different from our new situation, but the Greenhouse engineers were very helpful in adapting to our new situation.”
Aerodynamics - Racing Against Porsches and Lamborghini’s
The IT infrastructure being deployed and now migrated by Forze Hydrogen Racing to Greenhouse is mainly intended for the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). For solving fluid flow issues and optimizing the race car’s aerodynamics - to continuously improve the speed and handling of their hydrogen powered race car. The cluster of servers acts as a sort of supercomputer, allowing the team to repeatedly solve differential equations through different runs in order to make well-founded modifications to the race car’s bodywork.
Powered by these CFD-based modifications, Forze Hydrogen Racing expects to launch the latest version of its hydrogen electric race car, Forze IX, this summer. After two years of thorough engineering work, as a successor to the Forze VIII race car, the team until now has managed to achieve the following specs: acceleration 0 – 100: < 3 seconds; top speed: 300km/h; fuel cell power: 240 kW (327 hp); maximum boost power: 600 kW (805 hp) and all-wheel drive. The new car weighs 1500kg, and has a size of 519x 190 cm.
“With its innovative designs, our team is able to show the potential of this clean energy solution for mobility,” says Maxime van Kekem, Marketing Manager of Forze Hydrogen Racing. “Our hydrogen powered racing results until now are certainly impressive. We hope to achieve even better results with our new car, Forze IX. With this new car, we’re aiming at participating in the GT Class of the Dutch Supercar Challenge. In our newest endeavor, we’ll be up against the fastest cars including Porsches and Lamborghini’s.”
“To have our IT infrastructure now located in such a professional colocation environment really adds to our capabilities,” added Van Kekem. “The more efficient the data center environment set up, the faster we can execute the process of CFD-based modeling, simulation and modification.”
