Sustainability at USD

Information Technology Sustainability at USD

As awareness of the global environment, climate management and sustainability continues to grow, it is critical that information technology services become even more vigilant and proactive in reducing energy and resource consumption. Considering the need to power more devices each year, it is essential to implement systems and equipment that function in the most economical and sustainable way possible. Here are some figures from EDUCAUSE:

IT INDUSTRY ENERGY USAGE• Emissions growth from IT is faster than that of any

sector, especially in data-intensive disciplines• Office equipment accounts for 26% of the energy

used in office buildings (State of CA)• Lighting = 22%• Chilled Water Subsystem = 28%• Energy prices are expected to rise 6% per year (DOE)

PC STATISTICS• Average PC wastes half the energy delivered to it (Climate Savers)• 50 million tons of e-waste are produced

yearly worldwide (Green PC)

USER BEHAVIOR• As many as 60% of users don’t turn computers

off at night (PC Energy Report)• U.S., with 5% world population, uses 30%

of world’s paper (reduce.org)• Typical office disposes of 350 lbs. waste

paper per employee/year (NRDC)

USD has 2,421 desktop computers and 874 laptops, a total of 3,295 computers drawing power. Target replacement cycle for computers is 3 years and newer models tend to be more energy efficient than older models. Newer printers are also more energy efficient.

All current computer lease/purchase contracts include funding provisions for recycling, refurbishing or e-waste disposal of computers, monitors and printers. This amounts to approximately 15.5 tons of e-waste that USD recycles or refurbishes annually.

Fortunately, there are many opportunities to reduce energy usage within IT. Here are some of the measures the IT department at USD has already taken and those planned for the near future.

DESKTOP COMPUTER POWER MANAGEMENT• All newly purchased computers and laptops, as well as

peripheral devices, will be EPEAT-certified (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tools).

• ITS encourages ordering laptops since they typically use more energy-efficient, low-power processors.


SERVERS, SYSTEMS AND DATA CENTERSOver the past year, ITS has virtualized 63 physical servers. This

means that where individual applications once resided on their own servers, they now share server resources with other applications. Technology from VMware is used to “virtualize” these systems. This technology provides servers that appear to the application as though they were stand-alone, dedicated servers. The result is a much more efficient use of available server resources which ultimately reduces power and cooling in the data center.

USD’s Student, Financial, HR, and Advancement systems run on IBM servers that use a virtualization technology known as LPAR (for Logical PARtitions). Like VMware, this allows multiple applications to share common hardware, significantly reducing power and cooling costs.

Twenty years of old transcripts have been imaged and are now stored electronically; FERPA forms and Financial Aid award letters are imaged and added to student records.

Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate Admissions, part of the School of Law, Registrar and Financial Aid offices have all gone paperless.

As of November 2009, 558,761 documents have been scanned to electronic files, over 1.3 million paper pages – the equivalent of 33 four-drawer file cabinets.

FUTURE PLANS TO FURTHER REDUCE CONSUMPTION• All future applications and services will be carefully analyzed to

determine if they can be installed on shared or virtualized servers. • ITS continues to identify servers that reside in spaces throughout

campus that lack appropriate power and cooling. When identified, these are being moved to the USD data centers. Additionally, these servers are reviewed to determine if the applications running on them can be virtualized or otherwise moved to existing servers.


• ITS continues to centralize data storage. This results in fewer local storage resources, both on servers and on user desktops, resulting in reduced power and cooling costs, and an improved ability of ITS to manage the resources.

• ITS will continue to look at hosted solution providers for opportunities to reduce operational and management costs of applications. To date, applications such as Torero Mail (powered by Google), R25, T2, CashNet, Kintera, BlueHornet, and others are providing best-in-class applications, resulting in a zero footprint in USD’s data centers. ITS is exploring additional hosted and cloud computing options for major systems such as MS Exchange, Oracle E-Business Suite, shared services centers, cloud storage technology, and hosted server virtualization technology.

• Monitor and manage cooling in data centers

USING IT TO SUPPORT ENERGY-SAVING WORK PRACTICES• Use Kbox to shut down desktop devices after 15 minutes

idle time. Policies are currently being established so this can be implemented campuswide.

• Encourage making every paper-driven process electronic.• Increase paper and toner recycling.• Establish e-waste disposal areas throughout campus.• Review the use of printers campuswide and eliminate unnecessary

printers; all duplex-capable printers will default to duplex printing; set all printers to go into power-save mode sooner.

• Promote the use of networked printers to be used by entire departments rather than individual printers for each office computer.

• Encourage a “work-anywhere” initiative: web-based meetings, video conferencing webcams, thin clients, remote offices,


• Work with Procurement to establish a university policy of buying only Energy-Star devices. Continue ordering more laptops; each laptop replacing a desktop saves approximately 80 watts.

• Use Smart Strips to shut off devices and eliminate “phantom” energy use.

• Work with Facilities to manage building HVAC and power settings; utilize green design in new structures and remodels.

PUT YOUR COMPUTER AND MONITOR TO SLEEPScreensavers do not save energy and are no longer necessary for

extending screen life. Instead, save energy when you’re away by turning it off or enabling the power saving mode on your computer. If you’re using the power saving settings set the computer to go into sleep or hibernate mode after 10-15 minutes of no activity.

You’ll save energy and extend the life of your computer.

TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER AT NIGHTMany of us spend so much time on our computers, and check e-mail

and other services so frequently, that we never turn the things off. It may occasionally take you a few more seconds to get to work,

but you’ll save energy and money if you turn your computer off at the end of each day. It will also reduce wear and tear on your hardware, extending its life. According to the Department of Energy you’ll save an average of $90 of electricity a year.

conference rooms/classrooms equipped with video conferencing and telepresence technology.

• Continue to support process automation and e-commerce.

• Support a university-wide sustainability campaign of energy awareness and energy-efficient devices.


Sustainability at USD

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