Destination Serbia: a new life for CERN’s servers

In order to ensure the computing performances that CERN's research needs, the Computer Centre has to replace its computers regularly. After Morocco, Ghana and Bulgaria, it's Serbia’s turn to receive a donation of servers from CERN!

 

CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer and Jovan Puzovic from Belgrade Institute of Physics seeing off the servers on the beginning of their journey to Serbia.

On Monday 26 November, CERN donated 130 servers to two Serbian institutions: the Belgrade Institute of Physics and the Petnica Science School. In 2012, 559 computers were donated to institutions in Africa and Europe. Since the mid-2000s, the Computer Centre has changed technology and now have about 10,000 computers that have to be renewed every four to five years. Obsolete for the purposes of CERN's cutting-edge research, these computers are still suitable for less demanding applications.

Jovan Puzovic, Belgrade Institute of Physics team leader for the NA61 experiment (SHINE), and his deputy Dimitrije Malevic came to CERN to see off the lorry transporting the servers to Serbia. Warmly thanking the Organization for its donation, Jovan Puzovic said: “We are delighted to receive this gift which will be a great support for our group, our students and our doctoral students. The servers will significantly enhance the performance of our computing grid, enabling us to process our own data more efficiently, in particular for active participation in the NA61 experiment.”

92 of the servers will be installed at the Belgrade Institute of Physics while the other 38 will enable the students at the highly prestigious Petnica Science School to get to grips with the principles of the computer cluster. There's still life in CERN’s old computer equipment!

by Caroline Duc