Every day, we use colorful programs on our PCs or applications on the Internet or intranet without noticing the IT infrastructure and services behind them. Much remains hidden from us when everything is running smoothly. What we see is only the tip of the iceberg, the rest "stands and runs" in the data centers. Even on your own laptop, PC or tablet, the technology is so integrated in chips that individual functional groups are no longer recognizable, let alone expandable.
On KIT's Open Day, visitors, whether children or adults, were able to see and touch some of these invisible hardware components in two exhibitions in the SCC building and even disassemble and reassemble them.
The network department's "hardware petting zoo" displayed measuring devices, network components and connection cables sorted by type on two tables - from fiber optic and copper cables and various fiber optic connection adapters to different WLAN access points and network switches, to name just a few. The exhibition was supervised by colleagues and student assistants from the network team.
Various rack servers and their inner workings could be admired at the exhibition opposite: Hard disks, memory slots, fans, processor chips and much more. The exhibition also included historical computer parts from the last five decades, with colleagues from the systems and servers team on hand to answer questions and help visitors dismantle entire hard disks or server trays.
A highlight of the event was that the hardware could not only be viewed as part of the exhibition, but also in the data center rooms. On the tour through the basement, the participants saw the large tape library, the directly water-cooled high-performance computers, the high-performance storage systems and the network rooms with thousands of cables.
We were delighted with the keen interest shown by visitors of all ages, and it was fun to make a large part of the "IT iceberg" visible and tangible for outsiders.
To the KIT press release