Exchange Assembly 29 May 2009 Rare-IDC, Sustainable ICT Service Provision and Ecciles

29 May 2009 was day one of the exchange assembly between University of Hertfordshire (UoH), University of East Anglia (UEA) and Bolton University (BU) with Helen Bear, Nic Totten, Dominic Belisario, Steve Phipps, Richard Stern, John Houghton, Darrell Slater-Smith and Josie Fraser in attendance. With the intention of sharing information about data centre power monitoring and rack organisation for sustainable running, the day was spent primarily in two computer suites on the UEA campus.

First a visit to the primary and oldest computer suite (CS1), this is where power monitoring has had to be retrospectively fitted to an already operating infrastructure without disruption to services, and rack movements have had to be scheduled to permit downtime to minimise impact on users. A trip around the suite via the operations room included information sharing by means of an open discussion/Q&A session about what could be seen in front of us. This covered AHU (Air Handling Units), server racks, consumption and environmental monitoring boxes, power supplies, generator modules, humidifiers in addition to system and safety monitoring (CCTV, smoke and fire etc).

This was followed by a short walk across the campus to visit the new second computer suite (CS2) at UEA. In contrast to CS1, CS2 was only completed at the end of 2007/start 2008 and as such the power and environmental monitoring was integrated with the planning of the new suite. This provided a new set of challenges and opportunities to contend with as opposed to the retrospective fitting of CS1. A walk around with more open discussion and Q&As gave more information sharing and the passing on of experience tips!

This was all completed before a trip to UEA’s Top Floor restaurant for a cooked lunch!

Lunch was burned off with a walk to see UEA’s CHP (Combined Heat and Power) Biomass generator before a split between participants to discuss desktop provision monitoring systems and options, and wider issues affecting computer suites.

The key points shared in day one of the exchange mean that UoH and BU should be able to learn the lessons of UEA and utilise their experience to further improve the sustainability of their computer suites, particularly the differences between retrospective fitting and rack organisation and the pre-planning and design of new computer suites.

Day two of the exchange assembly is scheduled for 17 June 2009 with Helen Bear, Steve Mosley, Ian Yates, Pete Andrews, Steve Phipps, Richard Stern, Darrell Slater-Smith and Josie Fraser and will focus on server virtualisation at UoH where their experience is ahead of those at UEA and BU.

Helen Bear

h.bear@uea.ac.uk