Trying to save power and putting Gigabit to the edge

Transcription

1 Trying to save power and putting Gigabit to the edge Simon Palmer Systems Development Officer at Coleg Sir Gar (Carmarthenshire College)

2 Me Interest in Green issues Saving money Solar energy Alternative road fuels (Biodiesel/WVO/SVO) Electric vehicles (EV's) LED lighting I like greenlaning in my 4x4

3 Our College 5 Campuses over Carmarthenshire 2000 PC's (1000 at our largest site) 12,000 students (Approx 3,500 FTE) 900 staff (Approx 450FTE) 150 servers (75% virtual) (Approx 100 are Linux)

4 Our IT department 1 Computer Services Manager 3 Systems Development (I'm one of these) 9 Technicians

5 Network growth Many years ago Then Netgear Hubs, 3Com 3300's (10/100Mbps) Then Dlink Hubs and few switches, Cisco, Alliedtelesis, 3 or 4 servers 3Com 4400's (10/100Mbps) Extreme Core Then, recently 3Com 2924PWR, 2948's and Extreme core/edge, 100+ servers.

6 Our Systems today Main Site 2 HP C7000 Blade systems (8 servers each) 2 Hitachi AMS2100 FC SAN's Nortel VOIP telephony VMWare and XEN virtualization ExtremeNetworks Core (and ~20 edge stacks) Majority of edge is cheap 3Com about 100 switches

7

8 Why Gigabit to the edge? Application install and re-imaging File sizes of engineering CAD, art, media software growing Many of the new Gigabit switches also do POE and we wanted POE for our new telephone system and wifi.

9 So, how green is our network

10 Old kit I tested: All the old kit we had for disposal: Dlink 3Com Cisco ExtremeNetworks

11 What I found Extreme Blackdiamond 6808 = 1257 Watts! (A Cisco 6509 or similar will be more) 3Com W 3Com P=20W 48P=30W Cisco W Old Dlink 10Mbps fanless hub 6W So, the really old hubs used hardly any Late 1990's kit is hungry By 2005 kit was more efficient

12 How much does it cost to run the old kit? 7.9p/unit daytime 4.73p/unit night time Blackdiamond 1.83/day 666/year 100 3com 3300's 7/day 2,555/year 100 3Com 4400's 3/day 1,095/year

13 Carbon Dioxide 1000KWh = 545kgCO2 Blackdiamond 6,435KWh / year 3.5 Tonne CO2 / year 100 3com 3300's 230KWh / year 125 kg CO2 / year 100 3Com 4400's 112KWh / year 61kg CO2 / year

14 New kit Our ExtremeNetworks x450a stack that replaced our 1.3Kw blackdiamond uses ~120Watts That's a saving of 610 per year electric 5,898 KWh saved per year 3.2 Tonne CO2 saved per year

15 C7000 Networking Approx 105W for dual 10Gbps connections to each of the blades It's interesting that the 8Gbps FibreChannel SAN switch only uses approx 35Watts. I guess it shows the overhead of the TCP/IP stack.

16 Edge kit Except for POE switches (Power Over Ethernet, VOIP phones and WIFI Access Points) our new 10/100/100 switches appear to use about the same as the previous generation of 10/100 kit. Tested some Extreme, Cisco and 3Com kit.

17 Typical POE edge stack 5 x 48 port ExtremeNetworks x450e (POE switches) Stacked, 2 fibre connections, Through a UPS 500Watts 2560KWh / year 1.4Tonnes CO2 15 VOIP Phones, 3 Wifi AP's

18 Virtual Routers Some routers now can be virtual routers Think of the efficiencies of combining devices. I've had a need for one, but not the hardware to do it. So, we're using two bits of kit.

19 Soft Switches/Routers Vyatta, Vmware or plain Iptables(Linux) If you can do some routing/switching in software rather than having a bit of kit, You'll save rack space, cooling, CO2 and cost. You may also find you're in a better DR position if you're not relying on a bit of kit.

20 Air conditioning Our two largest Server rooms' A/C uses approx ¼ of the power of the kit in that room. 8.4KW for the room, 2.1KW for the A/C (Measured with ammeter in the DB)

21 UPS - Uninterruptible Power Supply Most new ones appear to be 90%-95% efficient We have room UPS systems.

22 Old phone system 3 Siemens IDX systems 1 Nortel Meridian Each consumed approx 1kw

23 Telephone system We recently removed the old systems and are now almost all VOIP. Each phone uses 3-4watts

24 Conclusion We reduced the carbon footprint of our core switching/routing by approx 80% with new kit, but the electric saving of 3,000 over 5 years isn't economically worth the investment alone. But, We would have required power, UPS and A/C upgrades if we hadn't.

25 Conclusion If you can replace several bits of kit with one, you can save time/effort/cables/risk and be more environmentally friendly in the process. Don't use a switch/router for one purpose if you have a device next to it that'll take it's job.

26 Lesson to self Don't upgrade kit until you need to.

27 Developments at our place Looking at installing solar panels