Shared Data Centers Program is inaugurated in Recife (PE)

A data center belonging to the Shared Data Centers (CDC) was inaugurated on Thursday, 10/30, at the Federal Education, Science and Technology Institute of Pernambuco (IFPE), in Recife, an initiative by the Ministries of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and Education (MEC), coordinated by RNP, in partnership with teaching and research institutions of the North and Northeast regions, and with Chinese company Huawei, responsible for the donation and installation of the equipment.  

The ceremony was held at the IFPE Auditorium, with the presence of authorities and representatives from teaching and research institutions. The table was comprised by the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Clélio Campolina Diniz, MCTI’s Secretary for Information Technology Policy, Virgílio Almeida; Pernambuco’s Secretary for Science and Technology, José Bertotti, China’s Consul General in Recife, Wang Xian; RNP’s General-Director, Nelson Simões; IFPE’s Rector, Cláudia Sansil; the Rector of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Anísio Brasileiro, and Huawei’s CEO in Brazil, Jason Zhao.

After the speeches and acknowledgements, there was the unveiling of the inaugural ribbon of the two containers contemplating the CDC’s solutions and infrastructures. The Shared Data Centers will allow meeting the demand for computational resources based on the current Cloud Computing technologies in a staggered and crescent manner, influencing the   collaborative activities of the Brazilian academic community, through a cloud architecture that starts to be made available in Brazil by RNP. The goal is to offer storage, processing and distribution services for digital content, including software, data, images and videos for teaching and research institutions in Brazil. In addition to Recife, a datacenter from the CDC was also deployed at the National Research Institute of Amazônia (INPA), in Manaus, in May of this year.

"We are starting a new stage with the use of applications that enable many projects in the areas of Science and research. To be able to harmonize time and space, one of the CDC’s functionalities, is to also rescue very important values for the future of Brazil”, Nelson Simões, RNP’s General-Director said. "With the deployment of the cloud computing service, through time, new datacenters, located anywhere in the country, will allow a greater information sharing between the researcher community and teachers and students, and ensure the replication of key data collections kept in various laboratories throughout the country, through the shared, redundant infrastructure offered by the cloud”, José Luiz Ribeiro Filho, RNP’s Service and Solutions director said..

The growing use in the Market and the advantages presented by the cloud Technologies made MCTI and MEC adopt them in the Information and Communication Technologies (TIC) infrastructure to support the teaching and research in Brazil. “Education, science and technology are the main elements for developing Brazil. We have to work for the continuous integration of the country,” minister Clélio Campolina stressed. One of the essential elements for offering cloud-computing services in Brazil is the deployment and operation of datacenters. This goal brought the partnership with Huawei to life, in 2011. The datacenters donated to the country by the Chinese company will be operated by RNP.

Choosing IFPE as the home institution in Recife is due to the infrastructure. “We were elected among many teaching and research institutions in Pernambuco because we are adequate, in the best of ways, to the technical and structural criteria requested for installing the CDC,” Igor Negromonte, IFPE’s IT director stated. “Recife is the reference center in the Northeast. Currently, every northeastern state is going through transformations in their educational bases and what we now see is a region completely integrated to the development process through which Brazil is passing,” the minister stressed.

The Shared Data Centers: benefits and actuations

The Shared Data Centers may be used in different areas: health, allowing the storage of surgery images in 4K Ultra High Definition, produced by the University Telemedicine Network; culture, to preserve and access the audiovisual content collection, such as the movies in Canal 100, about Brazilian soccer, kept by the Brazilian Film Library, as well as many historical collections; in Science, for the monitoring of the  environment and biodiversity; and in management and development of Technology and Innovation, to access indicators, scientific journals platform and evaluation systems.

Among the CDC program’s benefits are highlighted the reduction of the fragility of various teaching and research institutions in hosting a large volume of vital information and applications, such as scientific databases; the reduction of hardware, software and human resources costs for user institutions; increasing the agility and flexibility when using computational capacity for data processing and storing; increasing the information’s digital preservation capacity and shared data, through data replication in a safe environment in the country; and increasing the availability and security of information for researchers, teachers and students.

The cloud-computing services operated by the CDC program work in IT infrastructure equipment assembled in the shape of containers. The technology applied by Huawei includes servers and air-conditioning services with precision and energy that guarantee high-performance and easy deployment for companies of all sizes and segments. Besides, Huawei was the first company to achieve the Tier III certification for a container datacenter, which ensures the availability and security of the data trafficked and stored there.

The Shared Datacenters Program (CDC) will be essential for the Brazilian academic community for increasing the interaction among teaching and research institutions throughout the country, promoting the exchange of knowledge and experiences among teachers, students, scholars and researchers; facilitating the analysis of documents and contents, accelerating the processing of information and development of IT tools and other solutions for teaching and research.