Maximising your Data Centre’s Efficiency Workshop

As part of the JISC funded SUSTE-TECH project’s ongoing promotion of Green ICT initiatives

a workshop entitled “Maximising your Data Centre’s Efficiency” was held last Thursday, March 31^st 2011, at the University of Bristol’s Graduate School of Education. The event was attended by over 20 delegates, mainly ICT managers who were keen to learn more about how to reduce their data centres energy use as well as how to green their overall ICT systems.

The speakers at the event  included Paul Rock, Principal Consultant Engineer at Cardiff University who presented on the results of his JISC funded Planet Filestore and the StorC Project. In his presentation aptly entitled “How to Make your Data Storage Greener”, Paul explained how by holding the majority of user files on storage, which consumes less energy and is also accessed and backed-up less frequently, Cardiff University were able to demonstrate significant energy and financial savings.

Chris Cartledge, IT Energy Use Consultant presented on how the EU Code of Conduct can help institutions reduce their data centre’s electricity bill. The document, and indeed Chris’s presentation, explains how to implement best practice at your data centre;  purchase energy efficient IT devices only, use virtualised servers and storage, switch off hardware when not in use and use free cooling where possible.

John Milner, JISC Programme Manager for Shared Information Services, presented on the benefits of using shared services and explained how reducing resource consumption and efficiency is basically all that’s required to reducing data centres running costs. 

The last speaker Dr. Hugh Beedie, Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Director of Information Services at Cardiff University whose presentation on “A Holistic Approach to Green IT” pretty much covered everything.

Finally delegates were treated to a short tour of the University of Bristol’s Data Centre.

The tour guide, Dr. Ian Stewart, who is also the Numerical Analyst & Director of Advanced Computing at the University of Bristol lead the tour and took delegates into the university’s data centre. Feedback from the delegates after their tour was that it was very useful.
(I’d imagine many had never seen a data centre of its size before).  

Common threads running through each of the presentations were switching kit off or turning it down and using storage space more economically. In short, a reduction of consumption!

To view the presentations from the March 31^st Maximising your Data Centre’s Efficiency workshop (and others) simply click on the following link:http://www.eauc.org.uk/workshops