In June, Italian hosting, cloud and Internet service provider Aruba launched the first phase of what is set to become the country’s largest data center campus – with 90,000 square meters of indoor space and 90MW of available power.

This month, the company is holding an opening ceremony, a two-day event hosting customers, partners, local politicians, and even one astronaut – European Space Agency’s Umberto Guidoni.

“We are proud to officially present our Global Cloud Data Center, an ambitious project which, despite its size and complexity, we have managed to complete in a short space of time,” said Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba.

“The two-day event is meant to celebrate the achievement of this first goal and present the data center to the business world and the world of organizations, but also to open the doors of the data center to the outsiders of this sector and to the local community that has welcomed us with enthusiasm.”

The campus, codenamed IT3, is located in in Ponte San Pietro, about 40km (25 miles) outside of Milan.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is on-site power generation – a portion of the energy is supplied by Aruba’s own hydroelectric plant built on the adjacent Brembo River, while the rooftops of data halls are equipped with photovoltaic arrays. The campus also benefits from a geothermal cooling system that uses groundwater.

The first facility on the campus, DC-A, is ready to support 4MW of power capacity. Once fully complete, the site could reach 90MW of power supply, backed up by 119 UPS units, 11,564 batteries and 32 generators. The cooling would be provided by 192 CRAH systems, and network capacity would reach 150 Gb/s across 600km of cable.

IT3 has been designed to be fully compliant with Tier 4 standard according to the ANSI/TIA 942-A, and certification is currently in progress.