Case Study - Kyoto University Cuts Energy Consumption to Curb CO2 Emission
With an aim to improve its graduate school education and research programs, Kyoto University has increased the number of graduate students and teaching staff. IT has contributed to the progress of this academic innovation―and to the year-on-year growth of CO2 emission. The Kyoto University Environmental Report 2007 shows that the CO2 emission on campus has almost doubled from 1990. Major reasons for this: the Internet, PCs used by almost every student on campus, and 24-hour operation of servers and cooling systems. While the students were asked to run PCs in power-saving mode or turn power off when not in use, the university knew that it needed a major overhaul of its IT system to see a significant drop in energy consumption.
After careful review of the university’s overall information system, the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies (ACCMS), Kyoto University, decided to replace the existing computer system in place for web and e-mail servicing, research data and lecture archiving, and online learning programs for the university students and staff members.
The University’s Decision: Energy-efficient Server Consolidation
At Kyoto University, faculties and research teams had their own servers for web servicing and data archiving. The ACCMS found out that an increasing number of these servers were being underused, raising both the energy consumption and the CO2 level. Besides this, data security and mounting burden on administrators were also emerging as challenges to be addressed.
The ACCMS desired a new infrastructure that allows them to provide a secure and stable round-the-clock information service for less energy consumption. From among IT vendors that presented several different system proposals based on the ACCMS’ concept of “energy-efficient server consolidation,” the ACCMS selected NEC as a technology partner to make that concept a reality
“NEC’s ECO CENTER was above and beyond what we expected for energy-savings,” said Professor Yasuo Okabe, Department of Networking Research, the ACCMS. “It delivers outstanding performance as a server as well.”
ECO CENTER is an environment friendly server that reduces power consumption, weighs less and takes up less space than do conventional servers. Another highly rated feature was NEC’s SigmaSystemCenter platform management software that achieves true energy-savings by optimally allocating virtual and physical server resources and autonomously controlling power consumption within a rack.
System Overview
Managing Virtual and Physical Environments Efficiently
Kyoto University combined ECO CENTER containing 128 servers (512cores) with fibre channel switch modules, NEC SigmaSystemCenter, and NEC Storage with a capacity of 200 TB.
This new system is designed to optimally move and allocate server and storage resources in virtualized environments according to operational loads, thereby offering utmost flexibility without adding physical hardware.
“Our goal was to build a 24-hour information service system with absolute reliability and availability,” said Professor Okabe. “With NEC’s proven technology, we were able to put a solid and flexible information infrastructure in place,” he added. The new system saves administrators time and labor for managing a number of servers in different physical locations and allows them to install security patches from a remote location. The university hopes that anyone on campus will be able to experience the improved information service.
Striving for More Energy-Savings
The university started seeing noticeable effects when it reduced physical servers and replaced them with ECO CENTER. The new system monitors the workloads at the level of individual servers and moves underused virtual servers to another physical server while quantifying power consumption and automatically powering off servers not in use. The university aims to trim power consumption by approximately 50 percent eventually.
Building an on-campus networking system at Kyoto University was a perfect opportunity for NEC to gain more experience and know-how in computer infrastructure development. NEC, as a key technology partner, will continue to provide the university with innovation and support for creating a robust and scalable academic IT environment.
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