Digital Realty has introduced the Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL), a live data center environment located at its Northern Virginia campus. According to Digital Realty, the lab enables partners and customers to validate artificial intelligence (AI) and hybrid cloud deployments by providing access to supported, real-world data center infrastructure. Customers can bring their own workloads or use pre-configured environments to test and optimize configurations before executing full-scale deployments.
The DRIL is situated within an operational colocation data center, allowing both existing and new customers to validate and fine-tune high-density workloads with no impact on production systems. Digital Realty reports that DRIL supports workloads up to 150 kW per cabinet, including AI and high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Users can connect directly to cloud and network providers via ServiceFabric, Digital Realty’s global interconnection platform. The lab also facilitates AI workload orchestration through its Private AI Exchange (AIPx) and supports end-to-end latency testing between multiple locations and cloud environments.
Additional technical features highlighted by Digital Realty include access to the ePlus AI Experience Center within the lab for exploring advanced GPU, power, and cooling requirements tailored to AI infrastructure. The DRIL provides hybrid cloud validation through direct cloud connectivity and cross connects, and it is designed for orchestration and testing of complex AI deployments.
Robert Hormuth, Corporate Vice President, Architecture and Strategy, Data Center Solutions Group at AMD, stated, “The DRIL showcases how AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators deliver exceptional AI and HPC performance in a production-grade, high-density powered and liquid cooled environment,” noting its use for real-world use case validation.
Kevin Wollenweber, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Data Center and Internet Infrastructure at Cisco, commented, “The infrastructure supporting AI workloads is too critical to blindly trust without testing. Cisco is excited to collaborate with Digital Realty to help customers understand their infrastructure needs by testing on full-stack Cisco AI Pods.” He emphasized the need to verify the networking, compute, and security demands of various AI workload scenarios.
Koen ter Linde, Senior Vice President and President at CommScope CCS, said, “CommScope is proud to provide the foundational interconnection layer – from fiber and copper trunks to pre-terminated cabling systems – that supports rapid deployment and scalable performance,” highlighting the lab’s physical layer infrastructure.
The DRIL builds upon the AI Experience Center, launched in 2024 with ePlus and Vertiv, which offered a dedicated testbed for AI-centric workloads, emphasizing advanced power, cooling, and GPU resource support specifically targeted at data center environments. Digital Realty reports that along with the initial Northern Virginia site, global expansion of the DRIL is underway, with London targeted as the next location in early 2026.
Source: Digital Realty
