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OIT’s Contribution to IT Sustainability and Cost-savings Initiatives
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OIT’s Contribution to
IT Sustainability and Cost-savings Initiatives
University Initiatives:
Sustainability: Princeton’s Sustainability Plan sets ambitious goals in three areas: greenhouse gas emissions reduction;
resource conservation; and research, education, and civic engagement.
Cost Savings: The University’s goal is to realize efficiencies in academic and central administration that enable the
release of increased resources toward teaching, research, and the student experience.
IT Infrastructure Consolidation
The consolidation of IT services and technologies continued
in FY11. This effort resulted in reduced hardware and
software licensing costs and improved operating efficiencies,
by leveraging existing centralized hardware and standard
practices.
At the end of FY11, OIT managed 383 virtualized servers,
or 65% of the servers that can be virtualized. (Some servers
cannot be virtualized using currently available solutions,
but as virtualization technology matures, OIT expects to
virtualize close to 100% of all physical servers.) Of that total,
79 virtual servers (or nearly 20%) operate IT services for
departments.
Figure 1 illustrates the steady increase in the number
of servers OIT has virtualized since FY08. The annual
electricity savings achieved through virtualization equaled
1.9 million kilowatt-hours of power. The energy savings
equates to a cost savings of over $165,000 per year.
Figure 1. Servers virtualized, FY08-FY11
OIT’s infrastructure consolidation goals for FY12 are to:
• Increase the server virtualization target by 10%, for
a total of 75%.
• Migrate servers and storage from less energy-efficient
data center rooms across campus to the new High
Performance Computing Research Center (HPCRC),
opening on the Forrestal Campus in the fall of 2011.
Desktop Computer Programs
More than 3,000 University computers are managed through
the administrative desktop (DeSC) and faculty computer
(FCP) programs. The hardware and software standardization
provided by these programs has positioned the University to
negotiate lower pricing and maintenance fees. Additionally,
computing support staff are better able to provide the
highest level, and most efficient, support. Thus far, the
purchase price of each program computer has been reduced
by approximately $150 dollars (20%), which translates to a
savings of approximately $75,000 in annual procurement
costs.
PC Power Management
In another effort, during the past fiscal year, OIT added
500 computers to the University “PC power management”
program, bringing the total number of computers in the
power-management program to more than 2,400. Through
this program, which powers off computers when not in use,
computers consume approximately 50% less power. With
additional effort in FY12, OIT hopes to achieve even greater
cost and sustainability savings by increasing the number of
computers in the program to 3,000.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
As a next step in looking for desktop efficiencies, this
past year, OIT implemented a new “virtual desktop
infrastructure,” known as VDI. VDI has the potential to
centralize, and simplify, desktop management and support.
OIT is currently using VDI to provide central management,
and remote support, for the computers in the OIT training
rooms across campus, as well as for the computers in the
mobile “Classroom in a Box” service.
In FY12, OIT will begin a pilot program to assess the possible
benefits of using VDI to create centrally managed, virtual
desktop environments that are accessible through tabletbased
devices, such as iPads. The pilot should be available for
broader evaluation early in the academic year.