CASE STUDY
Tim Rosenfield , CEO and Co-Founder of Firmus , takes up the story : “ We quickly realized that our immersion cooling discovery had applications beyond cryptocurrency , and we began exploring what the technology could do for the data center industry and for clouds .
“ We ended up with a product that is arguably the most efficient data center design in the world , coming in at 1.03 PUE , as well as among the most capable . At 100KW hosting capacity per 45RU immersion rack , Firmus ’ technology is uniquely suited to hosting GPU and heavy and power-intensive AI servers that are used with increasing frequency for breakthroughs in science , industry and human endeavour .”
Firmus saw that the efficiency of its Supercloud data center design would enable it to offer a public cloud product at a price point sustainably lower than the rest of the market , and the company immediately set about putting its idea into practice .
“ Immersion cooling clearly had a lot of long-term potentials ,” said Tim Rosenfield , “ But by building a public cloud , we also saw an opportunity to start benefiting Australians right away .”
Solution
Pursuing its vision of a sustainable public cloud , Firmus chose to build its data center in Tasmania , an island powered exclusively by renewable energy . With the data center coming to life , the next step was building the cloud infrastructure .
“ From the outset , open source was a must and OpenStack was our platform of choice ,” recalls
About Firmus
• Australian cloud infrastructure provider headquartered in Tasmania
• Developer of innovative immersion cooling technology that is transforming data center efficiency
• Building a uniquely sustainable and costeffective public cloud called Supercloud
Rosenfield . “ Our team is passionate about the industry , and we believe that open source keeps the momentum going in critical projects like this one .”
To help design and deploy its OpenStack cloud , Firmus needed a partner that understood the scope of what it was trying to achieve and possess extensive technical expertise . Of all the vendors that the company evaluated , Canonical stood out as the most impressive .
“ We felt that , from a technical perspective , Canonical could grow with us ,” said Rosenfield . “ And the level of engagement from the Canonical team was remarkable . Even before we entered into a commercial agreement , Canonical offered valuable advice around OEMs and hardware choices . They were dedicated to our project from the get-go .”
This engagement gave Firmus the confidence to choose the full Canonical cloud infrastructure stack – including Charmed OpenStack and Charmed Kubernetes – and tasked Canonical with building and supporting the ecosystem . p
Firmus – inside the data centre
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