KUKA Industries

Space-saving wonder meets penny pincher

In data centres, every square metre of space and every kilowatt hour of electricity counts. What’s needed are all-in-one solutions that free up space while also significantly cutting power consumption. For example, a new Rittal cooling solution for IT containers, in use at KUKA Industries, shows that both are possible.

Overview

Project
IT container at KUKA Industries
Location
Obernburg/Main, Germany
Branch
Machine-Building
Challenge

No space for expaning IT infrastructure

High availability of IT 

Solution

Rittal Data Centwer container foe expaning IT infrastructure

External cooling with three Blue e+ outdoor cooling units

Improvement of CO2 footprint

Powr consumption is cut by a third compared to conventional rack climate control

Monitoring of cooling performance via IoT interface

 

The compact cooling units control units from the Blue e+ range are an important aspect of our efforts to improve our carbon footprint.
Phillip Knorr, Managing Director of KUKA Industries

The data centre inside the container is to serve both the local network and the entire IT infrastructure at KUKA Industries and host local business applications. “We used the space in the new data centre container to adapt computing performance to our actual current needs in the plant,” says Philipp Knorr, Managing Director of KUKA Industries, summarises. Furthermore, since the service staff at KUKA are already familiar with Rittal cooling units from their standard equipment, the staff can perform maintenance on the devices without any problems.

ONE-THIRD LESS ENERGY CONSUMPTION

With the aid of a new outdoor cooling solution on the outer wall of the container and based on the industry-proven Blue e+ technology, extra space is found within the modular data centre container for the constantly growing information technology. At the same time, power consumption is being cut by a third compared to conventional rack climate control. This makes it even easier for data centre container operators to reduce both their operating and energy costs.

SHORTER MANUFACTURING AND DELIVERY TIMES

All the cooling units come with an IoT interface. Operators can monitor all the cooling performance parameters via the web interface. The design of the new data centre containers also has a positive effect: Since the cooling units are now attached to the outside of the container, there is no longer any need to install the previously necessary raised floor, rack-based cooling technology and piping within the container.