CASE STUDY
Cardiff University Completes Energy Efficiency Upgrade
High Performance Computing
Comtec Enterprises
provides Schneider
Electric hardware
and software data
centre solution for
PUE improvements at
leading UK University
Introduction
Cardiff University’s HPC data centre
fulfils a number of disparate roles,
from housing the servers that provide
applications and storage for the
university’s general IT needs through to
hosting a high-performance computing
cluster, called Raven. The cluster is
operated by the Advanced Research
Computing at Cardiff (ARCCA)
division and supports computationally
intensive research projects across several
Welsh universities. In addition, it houses
the Cardiff Hub of the distributed High
Performance Computing Wales service
(HPC Wales).
The differing computing needs
of the Cardiff data centre imposes
challenges on its support infrastructure
including the power supplies and
their backup UPS systems, the
necessary cooling equipment and the
racks containing IT and networking
equipment. To help keep the significant
energy costs associated with running
such a state-of-the-art data centre to
a minimum, Cardiff University has
DCIM allows management to calculate PUE in real time.
28 NETCOMMS europe Volume V Issue 6 2015
installed advanced StruxureWare Data
Centre Operation: Energy Efficiency
management software from Schneider
Electric, so that it can tightly monitor
all the elements of its infrastructure to
ensure maximum efficiency.
Background
Founded in 1883, Cardiff University
is independently recognised as one
of the UK’s leading teaching and
research universities, coming 5th in
the UK for Research in the 2014 REF
assessment. Its breadth of expertise
encompasses the humanities, sciences,
engineering, medicine and technology.
The University is also home to major
new Research Institutes, which provide
radical new approaches to, among
others, neuroscience and mental health.
ARCCA was originally established
to help the University maintain and
build upon its position as a global centre
for research. It is also a participant in
a collaborative venture called High
Performance Computing (HPC) Wales,
a project funded by WEFO and the UK
BIS funds, supported by several Welsh
universities, and which supports major
research projects in collaborations with
Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
The University has worked from the
outset with Comtec, an Elite Partner
to Schneider Electric, to design and
populate its data centre. To maximise
the efficiency of the system the strategy
has been to co-ordinate rack density and
layout with a ‘close-coupled’ chilledwater cooling solution and hot aisle
containment (HACS). This has entailed
using components from Schneider
Electric’s InfraStruxure (ISX)
data-centre physical infrastructure
solution in conjunction with high
efficiency chillers.
A critical element in managing the
efficiency of the Cardiff data centre is
Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare for
Data Centres software suite (DCIM).
In use, DCIM gives insight into the
power use by the data centre and the
cooling capacity utilisation, allowing
management to respond to changes and
also to calculate metrics such as Power
Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in real time.
This metric is a ratio of the total power
consumed by the data centre to that
consumed by the IT equipment alone.
The closer a PUE ratio is to 1.0 the
better, from an efficiency point of view.
Performance Requirements
Hugh Beedie is Chief Technology
Officer for both the ARCCA and the
general IT Services department at
Cardiff University. He works closely
with the ARCCA team – notably
Christine Kitchen (ARCCA Associate
Director) and Wayne Lawrence
(ARCCA System Administrator), and
Keith Sims in the Estates Department
– in ensuring the HPC Datacentre
infrastructure for Cardiff University and
Welsh researchers in general is truly fit
for purpose. Hugh has a long-standing
interest in green computing and has
spoken at conferences on the subject.
He was part of the team responsible for
ensuring that the HPC Infrastructure
was designed to be as energy efficient
as possible, while also being functionally
advanced from a computing viewpoint.
This approach has paid off quickly
as, quite soon after its opening, the
data centre became part of the HPC
Wales initiative. This meant ARCCA
was required to take on additional
computing equipment that saw the
utilisation of the two contained server
racks in the data centre increase from 40
per cent to 80 per cent of their capacity.
The cooling systems were upgraded at
the same time. “We originally had three
identical 120kW chillers outside that
provided us with a well-balanced cooling
system,” said Hugh. “With the first
power and cooling upgrade, we replaced
one of the original chillers with a high
efficiency 300kw cooling unit. While this
increased the overall cooling capacity to
the data centre, it seemed to cause an
operational imbalance in the system.”
Subsequent to the upgrade, the
operators noted from their initial energy
monitoring that the PUE of the data
centre was deteriorating although they
could only surmise what was causing
this. A compounding problem was
that there was not enough insight into
how each element of the system was
performing, to pinpoint the reasons
for the decline in efficiency. “We didn’t
have sufficient instrumentation to tell
us whether the component parts of
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