Daimler’s High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads for car design and autonomous driving technologies will be transferred by Infosys’ to Lefdal Mine Datacenter’s mountain hall facility in Norway, one of Europe’s most sustainable colocation data centers. It’s a critical step in helping Daimler achieve its ‘Ambition 2039’ environmental goal of becoming CO2 neutral by 2039.
Building on its strategic partnership with Daimler to drive hybrid cloud-powered innovation and transform IT infrastructure, Infosys offered a solution to facilitate Daimler shift HPC’s to green infrastructure using Infosys’ Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) offering in the Nordics region. Infosys will manage the complete IT infrastructure as part of the endeavor, while Lefdal Mine Datacenter will offer the facility, which is a world-leading sustainable and energy-efficient data center.
“A large proportion of our IT energy consumption comes from our data centers which require significant power for computing and cooling,” said Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz. “That’s why we’re transforming our data centers with the support of our partner Infosys, bringing particularly the high-performance computing into one energy efficient solution at Lefdal Mine Datacenter. Not only will we benefit from natural cooling thanks to the cold weather, our operations will also be run on 100% green energy. This initiative marks another important milestone on our journey to becoming Co2 neutral.”
Situated Close to a Fjord
The Lefdal Mine data center is housed in a mine close to a deep, cold fjord with a constant, low temperature that allows for efficient cooling. When compared to air-cooled data centers, the Lefdal Mine Datacenter is unaffected by hot days, requires no evaporative cooling devices, and has a water use effectiveness of zero. According to Lefdal, depending on the UPS design and capacity scale, this system has a PUE of 1.10 to 1.15. The data center is a world-class site for high-performance computing settings.
“Infosys is a strategic partner to organizations navigating decarbonization and we are well positioned to deliver sustainable green transformation leveraging expertise gained from decade long efforts in environment stewardship,” said Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Infosys. “We pioneer projects around the world across every industry to facilitate climate change actions, developing solutions and services to help clients in their low-carbon transition. In delivering this transformation for Daimler we’ve shown how Green Infrastructure as a Service can radically reduce organizations’ impact on the environment and the vast potential for other organizations running high compute enterprise workloads to benefit from this industry-leading sustainability offering.”
Daimler AG is one of the most successful automobile firms in the world. The Group’s Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans, Daimler Trucks & Buses, and Daimler Mobility businesses are among the world’s top premium and luxury automobile providers, as well as one of the world’s major commercial vehicle makers. Daimler AG employed roughly 288,500 people in 2020 and sold 2.8 million automobiles. Group revenues were €154.3 billion, with an EBIT of €6.6 billion.
The Lefdal Mine data center has a potential of 120.000 m2 of net whitespace and 200+ MW DC capacity, with 10 MW capacity currently deployed. As one of Europe’s most sustainable data centers, Lefdal Mine’s facility is located in Norway and is owned by the Columbia Threadneedle European Sustainable Infrastructure Fund (ESIF), a mid-market infrastructure fund, and German Edge Cloud GmbH & CO KG, part of Friedhelm Loh Group, a German industrial conglomerate.
“We have built and operate a leading sustainable, secure and cost-effective data center – The Norwegian Solution. With short travelled renewable power and cooling from the nearby fjord, sustainability is in the core of our mission and values,” said Jørn Skaane, Chief Executive Officer, Lefdal Mine Datacenter AS. “Our ambition is to be the greenest data center in the world, with the ability to offer tailor-made and scalable data center solutions. We are inspired to have been chosen to host Daimler HPC workloads and will contribute for Daimler to become CO2 neutral.”
