Agreement between LUMC and University on hosting IT equipment
Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) will host some of Leiden University's IT equipment in its data centre. The two organisations signed an agreement to this effect on 10 April.
Last year, Leiden University decided to build a new data centre that will open in 2020. This Computing Facility for Excellent Research (CFER) is needed because the present University data centres buildings are bursting at the seams. Moreover, they do not meet today’s standards for reliability, energy efficiency and scalability.
First step in cooperation
‘As the new data centre won’t be ready for at least another year and a half, we have reached an agreement with LUMC relating to the Leiden supercomputer project that began last year,’ said Martijn Ridderbos. He is Vice Chairman of the Executive Board of Leiden University, and signed the agreement on behalf of the University. ‘We will begin by installing a High Performance Computing facility (HPC) for the entire University. Some of the IT equipment for this facility will be placed in the LUMC data centre. Using the LUMC’s data centre for IT equipment belonging to Leiden University is a first step in a new partnership between LUMC and the University that involves using each other’s data centres.’
Scarce resources
Once the new Leiden University data centre has opened at the end of next year, it will be possible to use this to host IT equipment belonging to LUMC. Using each other’s data centres is one way of making efficient use of the expensive and scarce resources that data centres are. Ridderbos: ‘It prevents situations arising in which one party lacks data centre capacity while the other has unused capacity. We will therefore make better use of the full capacity of the data centres of LUMC and Leiden University.’
Working on a Leiden supercomputer
From simulations of galaxies to analyses of MRI scans: scientific research requires increasing processing power. Leiden University is therefore going to set up a new High Performance Computing facility. Read more about this facility.