Speakers
Description
Queen Mary University of London completed a long planned [1] major refurbishment [2] of its data centre in Autumn 2024. The GridPP Tier-2 cluster is the main tenant of the datacentre which had been upgraded with heat recovery technology to improve energy efficiency whist also increasing rack capacity.
This contribution reports on the operational experience of the facility from initial commissioning in late 2024 through to mid-2026, focusing on stability, metrics, performance, key operational challenges, lessons learned, and infrastructure developments during sustained production use. The success of the system is evaluated through analysis of preliminary energy-use data and heat recovery data.
During this period, additional compute and storage resources have been deployed to support WLCG workloads, primarily for the ATLAS experiment, alongside preparations for increased demand from the High-Luminosity LHC and future astronomy projects such as LSST and SKA. The resulting increase in rack density and heat output has provided valuable insight into the behaviour of the enclosed hot-aisle, in-row water-cooled infrastructure and the water-to-water heat pump system under real operating conditions.
The presentation discusses capacity growth, day-to-day operations, and infrastructure issues, including cooling and power stability, monitoring, and recovery from incidents such as cooling outages, water leaks, and power events. Incremental improvements and mitigations introduced since commissioning are described. Updated measurements of energy use, heat recovery into the university district heating system, and carbon savings are presented, along with planned developments and anticipated challenges through May 2026 and beyond.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202429507012
[2] http://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533701253