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Energy-saving server solution reduced the environmental impact at Kyoto University. [ 04:05 ]
Kyoto, where tradition and state-of-the-art technology find harmony.
Home to the Kyoto Protocol, this city is highly conscious of environmental issues.
Here, Kyoto University promotes the fostering of international minds and the world’s highest level of research.
Kyoto University was experiencing a rapid rise in energy consumption due to growing IT use.
A new IT platform was necessary in order to provide safe information services and, moreover, to reduce environmental impact.
Yasuo Okabe, Professor, Department of Networking Research, Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University:
In the past, we operated servers in each research lab separately. Energy consumption of each system is small and we did not think it as a problem. But when you add up all of the research labs in the entire university, we could no longer ignore the impact.
With that, we started to look into ways we could reduce energy consumption by consolidating servers.
NEC proposed server integration through an energy-saving server and proprietary software, and offered total support in the construction of a highly flexible and secure information service platform.
Yasuo Okabe, Professor, Department of Networking Research, Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University:
In the past, we selected the computer system based on CPU computation performance, disk capacity and etc, but in addition to these, we have decided to add energy consumption as the key requirement, and placed a great deal of weight on it.
In the end, the system proposed by NEC scored very high in our ranking.
NEC’s energy-saving server, “Express5800/ECO CENTER,” realizes a reduction of up to 55% in power consumption, 50% in space and 57% in weight, compared to conventional servers.
And rather than a single server unit, focus is placed on the “rack,” the minimum configuration unit for a data center.
Hiromasa Fuchi, Group Manager, REAL IT COOL Promotion Center, IT Platform Marketing Promotion Division, NEC Corporation:
“I think the reason for this is that these days various fields value this change in thinking. – that we tried to find the most optimized energy-conservation for computer racks that are typically used in the datacenter installation environment.”
In addition, the NEC-developed software “Sigma System Center,” can help manage multiple virtual servers without manual operation. Effective power-saving operations are realized by avoiding increases in temperature through server load distribution, and shutting down unused servers.
Thanks to the construction of the new service platform, the number of distributed servers has been reduced, operating costs have been cut back and energy is being used effectively.
Moreover, server load and energy costs that change with the time of day or season can be visualized in detail.
Yasuo Okabe, Professor, Department of Networking Research, Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University:
And we are hoping that we can reduce the entire energy consumed by the servers to less than half, even after we subtract the energy consumed by this system.
Environmental issues greatly affect the entire world. These efforts made in Kyoto are bound to spread globally.
NEC will continue to contribute to reducing the environmental burden through IT.
