High Performance Computing Research Center (HPCRC)

 

 

Princeton’s HPC Research Center on the Forrestal campus is a 47,000 s.f., 5 MW data center providing  up to 3 MW of conditioned power (currently 1.8 MW with a current project underway to add one more  uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to bring the capacity to 2.4 MW. There is space to add yet another  UPS to bring the capacity up to 3.0 MW when the demand requires.) to the 12,000 s.f. data hall. The  LEED gold certified facility offers significant power savings through the use of an air side economizer  (outside air used for air cooling when temperatures and humidity are appropriate – an estimated 250  days per year), water side economizers (evaporative cooling towers with the capacity to cool the entire  facility at full load when temperatures are below 45 degrees F), a 2 MW natural gas generator and  associated absorptive chiller that can act as a cogeneration plant when electrical rates are high, and  chilled water rear doors for high density systems. A 2.5 MW diesel generator is used for backup power.  The electrical system is designed to provide N+1 redundancy for all components in the power chain for  the administrative systems. The research systems in the facility have the benefits of the generators and  UPS’s, but they do not have additional redundancy in the electrical systems. The cooling systems for  the facility provide N+1 redundancy, and there is a chilled water storage tower and a UPS for the pumps  and fans to allow for continued operation of the cooling systems while the generators start up. The  HPCRC also houses many of the research, academic, and administrative systems of the university.  

Princeton has a second server room space on the main campus. The New South building contains an  2400 s.f. server room that houses administrative systems and serves as an offsite location with hot and  warm disaster recovery for many of the university’s enterprise applications. The New South server  room has both UPS and generator backup electrical power.