Sustainable IT at HSC

1. Sustainable IT at HSC Dick Deason Academic Information Systems and Support J. Hillis Miller Heath Science Center

2. IT Sustainability Overview • What three sustainability concerns should we address when developing new IT Services? • Power Consumption (steady increase in electric loads) • Heat Generation (heat recovery challenged in BLDGs) • Waste Generation (disposal, reclamation & recycling) • What are a few strategies that we can use to ensure better sustainable use of IT Resources? • Increased use of more efficient virtualized hosting environments • Power down un-used equipment • Develop smart, universal services that leverage efficient technology instead of local resource burdens. Work toward a reduction in duplicated Commodity Services.

3. Server Power Consumption • Data Center Devices consume a great deal of UF power. At $0.1157/ kwh, one HP DL380G4 multiprocessor server with .5TB of local storage, operating at 25% load can cost approximately $415.54/year. • 0.410KW x 24 hr. x 365 days = 3592 kwh • 3592 KW x $0.1157/kwh = $415.54year

4. Server Cooling requirements • That standard HP DL380G4 operating at 25% load requires an estimated 1021 tons of cooling per year. That equates to $132.25 per year based on new UF chilled water pricing. • .410kw/hr = 1399 btu/hr. • 1399 btu/hr / 12,000tons/btu = .1166 Tons • .1166 tons/hr x 24 hr. x 365 days = 1021 Tons/year • 1021Tons/year x $0.1295/Ton = $132.25

5. Workstation Power Consumption • Although new Energy Star compliant workstations can leverage many energy saving features, many find these machine states to be obstacles to precise active management of the host. As a result, many power saving features are disabled in favor of workstation functionality. • In general, a powered on workstation with no active user is power wasting event. Even a newer workstation with no active power management functionality can consume an average of 115watts/hr. If we just calculate the “dead time” these workstations typically see during a calendar year, we’ll see quickly that our workstation pool has continued to increase UF power consumption. • 0.115KW x 108 hours/wk x 52 weeks = 645.84 KW • 645.84 KW x $0.1157/kwh= $74.72/workstation/year

6. Workstation Cooling Requirements • Say what? We actively cool workstations, but we don’t have a separate system like in data center to do so. We use the basic environmental controls within each BLDG. • A standard workstation without managed energy efficient power savings requires cooling, even when in an idle state and no user activity. Therein, those 108 idle hours require about 183 tons of cooling per year. • .115 kw/hr = 392.38 btu/hr. • 392.38 btu/hr / 12,000tons/btu = .0327 Tons • .0327 tons/hr x 108 hr./week = 3.5316 Tons/week • 3.5316 Tons/week x 52 weeks = 183.65 Tons/year • 183.65 Tons/year x $0.1295/Ton = $23.78/year

7. Big Examples • A small data center footprint with 20u of HP DL380G4s (qty 10) operating at 25% load cost UF ~ $5,115/year in Power and Cooling alone. • This does not include the cost of the any infrastructure equipment, just consumables (power and chilled water) • 100 Typical workstations, not employing active energy savings methods cost UF ~ $9,597/year in Power and Cooling alone during idle periods. • Based upon average 115 watts idle, no power management.

8. Server Virtualization • We’ve all known for some time those dozens and dozens of one off servers in our data center were many times wasted hardware. With the advent of robust virtualization architectures, we now have tremendous abilities to reduce the amount of physical devices hosted yet still provide the level of required resources. • By leveraging this technology, we’ve used VMware Virtual Infrastructure to reduce the amount of physical host in our data center by 45 hosts over the last 18 months. Obviously, there are many infrastructure and service advantages that we could point out, but let’s focus on just the sustainability aspect for now.

9. The Virtual Server Math • Based on a simple three node Virtualization Cluster (3 – HP DL385G4) we’re achieving 14:1 server consolidations with average host loads still below 50%. So, let’s do the power and cooling math. • **Approximately $475/year of power and cooling savings per virtualized guest as compared to conventional physical hosting**

10. Other Virtualization Savings • The cost of Ethernet and Fiber Channel Networking is sometimes disguised because of it’s abstraction. However, costs are real and irrefutable. By using robust virtualization environments with shared connections to both Ethernet and fiber channel networking, infrastructure costs will be lower per service environment. • How much lower you ask? As an example, a service environment requiring redundant Ethernet connections could be ran on virtualization platform among 13 other hosts with the same requirements. Obviously, bandwidth intensity must be considered. • If you look at the true cost of a Ethernet port (Public and Management), per host environment, we estimate around $397/host savings per year as compared to conventional physical hosting requiring their own redundant connections. Depending on the scale of Fiber Channel Networking, cost could indeed be as high. Our Cisco 9513 host ports cost about $353.30/port/year. Less wire and less infrastructure equipment = less power, less cooling, less expense, and less waste.

11. More Virtualization Savings • We now have 92% fewer physical servers to spec, purchase, have built, have shipped via truck, commission into our environment, decommission gracefully, survey properly, and then ensure they are properly recycled. • Because of the resilient and redundant nature of virtualization, we now leverage vendor supported extended warrantees and achieve 20%-40% greater service life's for similar service environments. This provides us decreased annualized cost per service and greater times between equipment decommissioning. • Physical to Virtual Server costs savings when fully amortized is as low as 25% of the physical annual costs, with our average being around 38% lower.

12. How much savings? • Over the past fiscal year, we’ve calculated our total savings for the 45 Virtualized Guests from the actual costs of the physical host, estimates of power and cooling, direct Ethernet and fiber channel costs, and one time physical provisioning costs. The results are not surprising.

13. Questions on Virtual Hosting?

14. Powering Off Workstations • We’ve elected to use a small GPO driven utility (PowerOff) to force Powering Down workstations instead of encountering the inconsistencies with different power management possibilities per device type. This provides us a better platform for patch management with far fewer early morning customer support issues. • Because it is GPO driven, we can exclude special function areas (Ex. Emergency Medicine, Research Lab Equipment) from powering down devices.

15. Powering Off Workstations (cont.) • The utility runs every night at 2000, just after patch management window occurs at 1900. The user is presented with an ability to STOP the shutdown as long as they are active on the host for the 5 minutes the cancellation GUI remains visible. • Since most users are not “weekend warriors” like us IT folk, most workstations remain powered off from 2000 Friday evening to their return to work on Monday morning. This eliminates almost all workstation phantom power.

16. PowerOff Savings • We have around 640 devices currently being powered down with this method, resulting in saving around 69120 hours of idle run time on these devices per week. **Based on current UF Power and Chilled Water Rates** **Based on an average of idle power GX280 and GX760**

17. Questions on WorkstationPowerOff?

18. Future Virtualization Technologies • We’re are currently provisioning pools of virtual workstations as a method to provide uniform secure access to our HSC Data Center Resources. Some are functional desktop replacements, whereas the others are used to replace traditional laptop/vpn remote access. While secure access is the primary consideration, this technology also has some very efficient side effects. • Fewer Laptop Devices deployed which overall reduces property management, waste and recycling requirements. • Lower Workstation requirements allows us to now run workstations far beyond their predicted useful life. Even after retirement, most can be replaced with more efficient terminal like devices.

19. UF Facsimile Services • In April, the decision was made to develop a Enterprise UF Facsimile Service. At present, we are conducting the 1st Phase of that project at the HSC because of some critical business functions. The Facsimile Service now in production was focused on the functional service layer, but we again have achieved some nice efficiencies as a result. • Reduction in the number of stand alone facsimile machines plugged into office power. • Reduction in the amount of paper and other expendables used to send a traditional fax.

20. Wrap Up • So what did we learn today? • Utilized Virtualization strategies can result in lower power and cooling requirements while simultaneously reducing the amount of technology waste we generate. • Powering Down un-used equipment can have dramatic effects on BLDG power and cooling costs. • Future Technologies such as facsimile services and virtualized desktops can eliminate paper and electronic waste while at the same time reducing and isolating power consumption.

21. Wrap up questions?