Looking at ways to save money and help further and higher education institutions enable their technology to work greener is the aim of a series of workshops being run by the JISC funded SusteIT project over the coming months.

Greener technology workshops

Looking at ways to save money and help further and higher education institutions enable their technology to work greener is the aim of a series of workshops being run by the JISC funded SusteIT project over the coming months.

The first in the series of five workshops, held at Cardiff University last month discussed the latest solutions in minimising the environmental impact of servers and high performance computing. One of the themes of the workshop was that green ICT issues need to be addressed at an institutional level

Delegates at the one-day event explored the issues of energy efficient configuration, cooling and power supply in data centres.

With pressure from the government on the whole public sector to reduce its carbon emissions, the event was designed to investigate how institutions can make their data centres more efficient. The workshop looked in detail at a number of approaches to efficent energy use and cooling in the data centre. Delegates were able to see first-hand the solutions adopted by Cardiff University.

One of the themes of the workshop was that green ICT issues need to be addressed at an institutional level. In particular, collaboration between the IT and Estate departments, along with their suppliers, is crucial, if sustainable solutions are to be possible.

Dr Hugh Beedie, Chief Technology Officer at Cardiff University explained that the event was particularly successful as, “the site tour enabled a first hand experience of good practice of the sustainable solutions that are currently in use at the university.”

The comparison below uses rough numbers for dual socket, quad core servers. The main point of the table is to show that more efficient, higher density cooling methods save on recurrent costs of both electricity and space.

Savings Comparison Table
Old Style* New Style**
Server space 500 watts 500 watts
Space 1 unit 0.5 unit
Servers per rack 12 40
256 servers 22 racks 7 racks
Air conditioning factor 1.6 -2 1.3 (apc cooled racks)
Power for 256 servers 128 kilowatts 128 kilowatts
Air conditioning power 77 - 128 KW 39 KW
Total 205 - 256 KW 167 KW
Space saving 66 Sqm 7 Sqm
Savings £38,000 - £89,000 p/a
*Old style means classic room-based air conditioning,
with no more than a basic check on air flow parameters,
and the assumption that one can cool up to a maximum of 6kW per rack.
**New style refers to the APC Hot Aisle Containment system,
using Netshelter enclosures, and using higher density servers
(because that is now possible with the ability to cool up to 20kW per rack).

Future workshops

21 August 2008, Edinburgh – New ways of working
Will look at how remote working and video conferencing can enable staff to work more efficiently and flexibly. The workshop will be held at Queen Margaret’s University, which has designed its new facilities with flexible working in mind – with hot-desking areas and physical meeting spaces that are being replaced by virtual ones.

2 September 2008, Sheffield – The sustainable desktop 
This workshop will highlight examples of good practice in how further and higher education institutions can reduce their desktop computing energy consumption and carbon footprint by:

  • powering down PCs when not is use
  • harvesting idle CPUs through grid computing techniques
  • purchasing devices with low power consumption
  • substituting thin client devices for PCs

Further workshops are planned for the Autumn 2008 and early next year on Intelligent Buildings, Virtualisation and Shared Services as well as on issues affecting the further education sector.

WebsiteFurther information on the SusteIT project

Add your thoughts and views by joining the online discussions at JISC’s new Green ICT blog

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