LAVER DATA CENTRE ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROJECT
PROJECT TEAM
Project Sponsor: xxxx.
Stakeholders: xxxx, xxxx
PROJECT BACKGROUND
ICT is becoming ever more ubiquitous within higher education, for e-learning, in research, e-administration
and other ways. This creates many benefits, including ones of direct relevance to sustainable development
such as improving accessibility for disadvantaged groups, and reducing environmental impacts by substituting
virtual for physical activities (as when conferencing substitutes for face-to-face meetings).
One negative to this growth in ICT consumption is the ever increasing energy requirements of datacentres.
There are a few simple changes that can be made to datacentres to try and mitigate some of the
environmental & financial effects of this growth.
PROJECT AIMS & OBJECTIVES
Main Aims:
1.
2.
To improve the energy efficiency of the main Laver datacentre
Attempt to quantify any improvements.
This will be achieved by examining the data centre & evaluating a range of options to reduce power
consumption. The results of this should be better average power consumption of servers within the
datacentre, and a better ratio of power used by the IT equipment to the power used by the room in the form
of cooling.
The project implemented a series of quick wins for the datacentre to improve power efficiency. Throughout
the project, progress was reported the Exeter IT sustainability group & recorded in the IT sustainability tracking
spreadsheet.
BUSINESS CASE
As well as the good news story for the university, there are substantial financial savings by making the best use
of the energy consumed in the data centre.
1
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Energy prices are forecast to double over the next decade. 1 At the moment, the Laver datacentre
consumes approximately £76,000 per year.
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Future university funding will be in part based on our sustainability performance. This has led to
the creation of the carbon management plan, of which IT is one component. 2
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2011/05/10/energy-prices-could-at-leastdouble-over-the-next-decade-91466-28663579/#ixzz1Mt0QNDfR
2
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/corporateservices/sustainability/pdf/Carbon_Manageme
nt_Plan_2010-2020.pdf
PROJECT OUTCOMES
Four distinct areas for improvement were identified by the Exeter IT sustainability group:
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Hot/cold aisle containment to stop hot & cold air mixing, which reduces energy efficiency.
Reconfigure the existing air handling units with variable speed fan drives to reduce their overall
power consumption.
Increase the set temperature of the air-conditioning to further improve air-conditioning efficiency.
Ensure that all existing servers are making best use of any built in technologies (e.g. VMWare DPM,
Blade centre power supply standby.)
TIMELINE & RESOURCES
Most changes were made at zero cost. Where there has been expenditure required, costs have been met by
the datacentre maintenance budgets. Other resources (e.g. staff time, recycled equipment) were reallocated
within the university. The gantt chart below shows the timeline of work & staff resources required at each
stage.
PROJECT CONCLUSIONS
The four main areas identified by the Exeter IT group have been improved. Unfortunately the only
historical data for the main air-conditioning system runs between years, so we won’t see any evidence of
improvements for a year.
The server improvements & hot/cold aisle containment work have resulted in an improvement for the
average power consumption for a server – in the last 12 months, it has dropped from 145watts to 124watts.