Network Communications News (NCN) September 2016 | Page 21

Scuderia Ferrari

process at Scuderia Ferrari. ‘This means
that systems have to be totally reliable
because during a race focus has to be
entirely on the car and the race itself and
not on the tools.
‘We collect and analyse telemetry
(remote monitoring of dozens of sensors
in the car during an actual race), weather,
and strategic data during races. We
continuously process this data in real
time in order to refine and constantly
improve our performance. At the same
time our IT team collects and processes
system operation data for continuous
performance tuning.
‘We needed to consolidate operations
and introduce new technologies to our
research and development data centre.
Our engineering department wanted
better performance and we needed to
manage remotely. Our facility needed
to be customisable, the rooms needed
to be able to change their configuration
easily. Because of all of the rules changes
of the business, a modular type of data
centre was required.’
‘Working with Schneider Electric
allowed us to create a very flexible data
centre infrastructure,’ says Francesca
Duri, chief technology officer of ICT.
‘Ferrari’s data centres were created
primarily to host Formula One
computation systems. They have to be
flexible, modular, efficient and reliable.
The qualities we were looking for in
a data centre supplier we ended up
finding them in Schneider Electric.’
‘System server and data centre
reliability is very important to our
Formula One success. For example,
the most important systems in our data
centre are the ones that calculate the
car’s external aerodynamics. The results
of the aerodynamic simulations must be
ready in time for us to create the parts
for the next Grand Prix,’ says Duri.

Reliability and innovation
Ferrari commissioned its first Schneider
Electric/APC data centre in 2004.
That data centre was equipped with a
cooling capacity of 20kW per rack. The
InfraStruxure modular/scalable system,
which still is available as a popular
offering today, serves as the physical
infrastructure supporting computational
fluid dynamics platform and the
simulations essential to the aerodynamic
modelling of Ferrari’s championship
Formula One cars.
The ‘on-demand’ architecture of
InfraStruxure provides power, cooling,
management and services in a rack
optimised design, which is scalable

PROJECT FOCUS

The two data centres allow the Ferrari Formula One racing teams to easily
monitor, store and analyse the performance of each and every part of their cars.

in accommodating server capacity.
Such scalability eliminates much of
the planning guesswork, reduces
installation downtime risk, and allows
for the optimisation of today’s high
density computing installations. The
integrated cooling system consists of
In-Row precision air conditioners, and
high efficiency Hot Aisle Containment
Systems (HACS).
Ferrari’s second data centre was
built in 2015. A 300m2 site was created to
support Ferrari’s Formula One car design
team. Like the earlier data centre, it is also
equipped with high efficiency cooling
solutions, automatic static transfer switch
(ATS) and hot aisle containment.
This latest data centre was built with
sustainability at its core, as it needed
to comply with the strict sustainability
measures now in place at Ferrari’s
Maranello headquarters.
The two data centres allow the
Ferrari Formula One racing teams to
easily monitor, store and analyse the
performance of each and every part of
their cars on the test track, and during
the competitions. This data allows
the engineers to better understand
every single aspect that comes into
consideration when building the optimal
car. They can also react quickly to the
newly imposed rules and regulations.
‘The Schneider Electric solutions
developed over the years have helped
to meet our high precision flexibility and

reliability needs,’ says CIO Boero. ‘Those
solutions allow us to achieve a high level
of manageability. Once we adopted
the latest Schneider Electric data
centre management platform, we were
able to work in a more strategic and
predictive way. In addition, if we need
to intervene “on the fly”, to modify
certain components, the Schneider
Electric solution lets us do that with an
extremely high degree of security and
flexibility,’ he concludes.

This latest data
centre was built
with sustainability
at its core.

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