OREANDA-NEWS.  The Lufthansa Group’s IT subsidiary, Lufthansa Systems, is making ongoing improvements to the energy efficiency of its computing centres – right down to a depth of 16 metres. The IT specialist’s largest computing centre in Kelsterbach near Frankfurt covers an area of about 6,600 mІ. More than 2,000 servers, which generate a huge amount of hot air, are distributed between four data centres.

Implementing an intelligent air conditioning solution is a key component in the company’s efforts to further reduce electricity consumption at its computing centre. Every hour, 280,000 mі of air is moved in each data centre. In terms of the energy balance, the separation of hot and cold airstreams plays an important role. The server racks are positioned in such a way that warm air escaping from the servers is collected in one aisle, while cold air that is fed into the system is collected in the parallel aisle. The air streams are thus kept separate from one another, and cold and warm aisles are created. The cold air can thus be used specifically and efficiently to cool the servers, without incurring any energy losses.

Another component involves harnessing the outside temperature. Particularly in winter, the system relies up to 100 per cent on the use of outside air to cool the servers.

Thanks to these and other green IT measures, Lufthansa Systems managed to lower its electricity consumption by about five per cent in the first nine months of this year, compared with the previous year. In future, the IT specialist will therefore be able to continue operating its computing centres in an environmentally friendly way.