Computing Facilities

Colleges have been building so-called smart classrooms for years, equipping them with computerized projectors, digital whiteboards, and other tools. Now some of those once-high-tech rooms are starting to show their age at many colleges.

Designing and building green data centers can have a significant impact on the environment and a company's bottom line. A green data center is a repository for the storage, management, and dissemination of data in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. 

The green data center has moved from the theoretical to the realistic, with IT leaders being challenged to construct new data centers (or retrofit existing ones) with energy saving features, sustainable materials, and other environmental efficiencies in mind.

This tutorial will survey the wide variety of options and issues that the data center designer must keep in mind in these matters, as well as illustrate how government regulation and certification will be affecting the data centers of the future. Analysis will include the US Green Building Council LEED standard, as well as other regulatory standards that are driving green data center construction. 

Learning Objectives: 

This ECAR research bulletin analyzes how several IT offices, largely at Maryland colleges and universities, are responding to the challenges issued in the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) initiative. Since it is early in developing a response to ACUPCC commitments, the bulletin also examines what these institutions intend to do in the near future. ACUPCC was organized to galvanize the U.S. higher education community to understand and act on issues surrounding climate change and sustainability. In support of this study, the authors interviewed chief information officers at 18 Maryland higher education institutions whose presidents had signed the ACUPCC at the time of the study (twelve public four-year institutions and non-degree granting research centers in the USM, four private four-year institutions, and two community colleges), as well as a representative from the University of Pennsylvania.

Installing IT infrastructure in new building construction or existing facilities is a complex undertaking and requires development of specialized skills through long-term experience. Close working relationships must be developed and fostered between the IT organization and facilities, architects, planners, designers, and academic departments.

This autumn, PC World will launch its first "green" PC, and surely herald a wave of such products to hit both home and business. Is this the signal that it is time to clear out the techno-junk and invest in a new generation of ecologically sound hardware? Even if there is a lot of "green washing" of products that would have come out anyway, it would seem that the environmental benefits are clear cut. Unfortunately, however, it is more complicated than that: most of the green promises on offer centre on energy usage, and this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to IT's ecological impact.

E-Waste is a popular, informal name for discarded electronic products such as computers, VCRs, cameras, which have reached the end of their "useful life". Discarded electronic products contain a stew of toxic metals and chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and PCBs. Unfortunately, e-Waste, a dangerous byproduct of technology's relentless expansion is one of the fastest growing segments of higher education institutions' waste stream. We need to be strong advocates of "producer responsibility" and give companies an incentive to produce environmentally friendly products. In addition we must learn about and educate our campus communities about managing old electronics and associated materials. In this report, we attempt to answer the question "What should be done with old electronic products?" discuss opportunities for waste prevention and reuse, and talk about regulatory issues.

Personal computers (PCs) are one of the fastest growing electricity loads in business and academic arenas. According to one recent estimate there are about 26,800 PCs and nearly half that number of printers currently used in University of Michigan (U-M) buildings. Although it is difficult to estimate, PC operation probably accounts for over 10 percent of all electricity used by the U-M.

The U-M Utilities and Maintenance Services Department, Energy Management Division, has written and distributed a booklet titled UM Guide to Green Computing: What You Can Do To Conserve Energy On and Off Campus. This information guide highlights some of the advice contained in that booklet.

To meet the power and cooling demands of modern computing and network equipment, IT organizations will either need to retrofit or relocate their data centers. This session will focus on the project and constraints of retrofitting an operational data center at Louisiana State University and discuss some power and cooling concepts.

Five-year trends revealed by an annual residence hall survey help campus technology planning.

Where do students use computers? Many institutions believe students don't need computing facilities because many own laptops. Some campuses create distributed environments with two computers and a printer per residence hall; others build massive computing labs with hundreds of workstations. CMC has explored an alternative solution to student computing.