Rack Renew’s partner ScaleUp Technologies has opened a new OCP Experience Center in Nuremberg, giving data center operators, cloud builders and technology partners a place to work directly with modern compute infrastructure in realistic conditions. The center was launched during the Liquid Cooling Lab event, where specialists from across the European cooling and compute ecosystem came together to share practical innovation. As part of this collaboration, Rack Renew has supplied a fully remanufactured OCP server that visitors can test, configure and benchmark on site.
A facility built for real world validation
High density workloads, AI driven services and advanced cooling technologies are reshaping how data centers are designed and operated. Many teams now want more than specification sheets. They need to see how systems behave under real workloads, in real racks and under realistic thermal conditions.
The OCP Experience Center was created with that requirement in mind. It offers an operational environment where visitors can explore immersion and liquid cooling setups, evaluate OCP based architectures and observe how different components interact as part of a complete stack. Rather than relying on slide decks or lab style demonstrations, technical teams can work with the infrastructure directly and use their own test scenarios as the basis for future decisions.
Bringing remanufactured OCP hardware into focus
Within this setting, Rack Renew provides a data center grade remanufactured OCP server that reflects its lifecycle driven approach to sustainable compute. The system has been recovered from a previous deployment, fully remanufactured and configured to meet enterprise requirements again.
Visitors can:
- Run representative workloads
- Explore configuration options
- Compare performance against their existing environments
By making remanufactured OCP hardware available for hands on evaluation, the Experience Center turns circular IT from an abstract concept into something concrete. Engineering and procurement teams can see how the system behaves under load, how it integrates with cooling technologies and how it fits within their own infrastructure standards.
Insights from the Liquid Cooling Lab opening
The Liquid Cooling Lab opening in Nuremberg served as the backdrop for the first demonstrations in the Experience Center. The program highlighted immersion cooling, liquid based thermal management and the role of high density hardware in modern data center design.
During the technical sessions, Jelle Slenters presented Rack Renew’s perspective on lifecycle optimisation and the reuse of OCP hardware. He outlined how extending the usable life of OCP systems can support sustainable deployment models for AI, cloud and HPC workloads, and how circular hardware aligns naturally with liquid and immersion cooling strategies. By combining efficient cooling with remanufactured servers, operators can reduce both operational and embodied emissions while maintaining the levels of performance their applications require.
Why remanufactured OCP hardware belongs in modern data centers
Enterprises and data center operators are under pressure to reduce carbon impact while keeping up with rapidly growing compute demand. Remanufactured OCP hardware offers a practical way to balance these priorities.
Remanufactured systems avoid the emissions associated with new manufacturing and global logistics, while still providing the density and performance needed for AI, ML and hyperscale workloads. The open mechanical design of OCP hardware supports efficient airflow and is well suited to immersion and liquid cooling environments where thermal efficiency directly affects power usage and cost.
For decision makers, this combination matters. Remanufactured OCP hardware can:
- Lower embodied carbon per unit of compute
- Support higher rack densities in cooling advanced environments
- Deliver performance that aligns with business and technical requirements
- Reduce dependence on long lead time hardware supply chains
In many cases it is not a compromise, but a different way to reach performance, cost and sustainability targets at the same time.
A partnership designed for practical impact
The collaboration between Rack Renew and ScaleUp builds on a shared goal: accelerate the adoption of circular IT in the data center market and make it straightforward to deploy remanufactured OCP infrastructure.
ScaleUp acts as an integration and distribution partner for Rack Renew, providing access to remanufactured OCP servers, storage and rack infrastructure alongside its own engineering and support capabilities. In the Experience Center, this partnership becomes visible.
Visitors can:
- Evaluate complete configurations rather than individual components
- Discuss integration options with ScaleUp’s technical team
- Explore support models and deployment approaches that fit their own environment
This combination of circular hardware expertise and integration experience gives organisations a clear path from testing in the Experience Center to running workloads in production.
Visit the OCP Experience Center
The OCP Experience Center in Nuremberg is open to organisations that want to see circular infrastructure working alongside advanced cooling technologies. Data center teams, cloud architects and sustainability leads are invited to:
- Test the remanufactured OCP server provided by Rack Renew
- Compare cooling and configuration options under real operating conditions
- Build an evidence based view of how circular hardware fits into their roadmap
By spending time in the facility and working directly with the systems, visitors can move from theoretical interest in remanufactured OCP hardware to practical evaluation and planning.
Go deeper into lifecycle driven deployment
For readers who want to explore the lifecycle principles behind this collaboration in more detail, Rack Renew has published the whitepaper titled “Beyond New: Turning Decommissions into Data Center Deployments”. It explains how decommissioned OCP hardware can be remanufactured and redeployed, how this approach reduces embodied emissions and how it supports more resilient procurement and deployment models.
The whitepaper is available through the Rack Renew website and offers a deeper look at the strategies that are shaping the next phase of sustainable, high performance compute infrastructure.
