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Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) > Case Studies > How Aston Martin Red Bull Racing Designs to Win

How Aston Martin Red Bull Racing Designs to Win

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Digital Twin
Virtual Prototyping & Product Testing

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration

The Challenge

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, a UK-based Formula One racing team, was facing inefficiencies in its car design process due to the need for aerodynamics engineers to use two separate workstations, each running a different operating system (OS), for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. This resulted in a slow and cumbersome design process, with engineers having to manually port data from one workstation to another. Additionally, the input and outputs to CFD 3D modeling are very graphic intensive, requiring high-spec GPUs on the workstations.

About The Customer

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing is a Formula One racing team based in the United Kingdom. The team is highly competitive and optimizes its car for every race, resulting in over 30,000 design changes a year. To deliver these design updates quickly and accurately each season, the team's aerodynamics engineers use computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) to simulate airflow over the car. This acts as a virtual wind tunnel, enabling new designs to be tested and improved before going into production. The team's CFD process is complex and requires hundreds of steps that cross between applications on Linux® and Microsoft Windows operating systems (OSs).

The Solution

To address these challenges, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing collaborated with HPE and Citrix to develop a hyperconverged, high-end virtualization solution. The solution involved the use of Citrix Workspace with Linux VDA hosted on HPE SimpliVity 380, allowing engineers to operate between two OSs on a single machine. The Citrix Workspace, which includes virtual apps and desktop services, is hosted on HPE SimpliVity 380. The solution’s hyperconverged architecture enables the team to have a high-performance platform to deliver high-end, virtualized Linux workstations powered by Citrix. A single workstation can now run both the Windows- and Linux-based applications needed for CFD.

Operational Impact

Engineers can work more efficiently without the sub-optimal arrangement of manually toggling between two physical workstations.
They no longer need KVM switches at their desks. Instead, they can do the CFD work on an existing user laptop that runs the Citrix Workspace app.
The IT infrastructure team benefits from removing physical workstations and KVM switches from desks. They no longer have to support these demanding machines. This reduces management overhead and ensures that the aerodynamics engineers have the data they need.

Quantitative Benefit