Japanese baseball team Rakuten Eagles has installed two micro data center units from Zella DC inside its indoor training facilities, located in the city of Sendai.

The Zella Pro 25U model micro data center units were provided by Japanese internet service provider Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), which has partnered with Australian micro Edge data center manufacturer Zella DC to bring Edge computing solutions to the Japanese market.

Rakuten Eagles needed a server for improved player performance systems, but with an already full existing server room more than 30m from the training field, the team required a new low-latency server closer to where practice takes place, inside the first team and farm team indoor training facilities.

However, the practice facilities are semi-outdoor environments susceptible to dust, humidity, and seasonal temperature increases, and need IT infrastructure that can function in unstable and potentially harsh conditions.

The Zella Pro 25U is a compact, all-in-one, portable, and secure micro data center about the size of a refrigerator, with single and dual cooling available. It features noise insulation, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), is waterproof and dustproof, as well as having 24/7 remote DC management by IIJ, so it meets Rakuten Eagles' needs.

Rakuten Eagles was concerned that the heat and noise from having data center infrastructure inside the training facilities might affect players’ training environment and performance. But a separate air conditioning unit installed outdoors fixed that issue.

Rakuten Eagles general manager Daisuke Yamagata said that the club wants to see proactivity from providers and “in the future, we would love to receive proposals such as, ‘Considering the characteristics of our industry, we think we can do this,” rather than the baseball club initiating projects such as the Zella Pro micro Edge data center deployment.

Previously known as Zellabox, Zella DC was founded in Perth, Western Australia, and offers a number of micro data center products – self-contained, single-rack data center pods that can be deployed inside buildings or outside.

Founded in 1992, IIJ was Japan’s first ISP. It operates around 17 locations in Japan and five more internationally. Alongside Zella DC the company has deployed micro data centers in Japan, Iceland, and Ukraine.

The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles are a Sendai-based Japanese baseball team owned by online shopping company Rakuten, and are the newest team in the Pacific League (PL) group of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league. The team was formed in 2004 following the disruption caused by the Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes merger, which left only five teams in the PL, a gap the Rakuten Eagles filled.