Reducing our carbon footprint
The University of Sheffield Approach
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Overview
• Background
• Desktops
• Printing
• Data Centres
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Background
• 13,000 PCs on campus
• Over 100 IT services
• Two data centres
• Centralised and distributed printing
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PC Energy usage
• Work done by Chris Cartledge/Ian Jenkinson on processor wattage
• Work on monitor energy usage needed
• Work on other components (disc drives, memory?)
• Thin client solutions
04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield
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04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield
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Printing
• 50 million sheets of paper used 2007-2008
• Only 28% of paper recycled
• 2010 – 98% ‘recycled or environmentally preferable’
• 835,000 Kwh p/a; 450 tonnes CO2
Printing• Environmental Print Review
• Recommendations
• Print Audit
• Print submissions software
• Pulling together print/photocopying under CiCS
• Student Printing• Prepay replaced old collect and pay system
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04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield
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Data Centres
• Main activities• Virtualisation
• Simple fixes
• Air-conditioning
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Virtualisation
• Pre 2010• 50ish physical Intel
servers
• 100ish physical Sparc servers
• Doesn’t include HPC
• 2010• 20ish physical Intel
servers inc 4 VM boxes
• 110 VMs
• 50ish physical Sparc machines
• 4 Sparc zone hosts
• Further consolidation on the way
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VM Savings
• 1 physical server c£250 p/a energy
• 1 Virtual server c£750 p/a energy
• 4 virtual servers running 110 VMs
• Savings = £500 * 106 = £10,600 p/a
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Virtualisation - disk
• Pre 2007• 15 different disk
enclosures
• Directly attached storage on Novell and windows servers
• 2007-2010• 2 physical disk
enclosures
• Staged removal of DAS
• Nearly all storage now on NetApp disks
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Simple fixes
• HPC – low energy memory
• Lower energy processors (AMD HE)
• Environmental considerations part of every project
• Air conditioning
Brunswick electricity use
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CC electricity use
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04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield
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Free Cooling project
• Hot aisle containment
• Chiller units only active when ambient temperature rises above input temperature
• Savings of c£60,000 p/a approx
• Capital cost may be between £200k-£400k
• Pump-priming money may be available (Salix)
To DiscoverAndUnderstand.
