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| Quick Notes
ITS Staff Milestones
Congratulations to Bruce Hammond, Enterprise Senior IT Analyst for his 10 years of service at Syracuse University. |
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IT Professional Development
Staff on the cutting edge
Training & Education
Recently Dan Turk and Dave Hubbell of ITS Learning Environments attended Extron's School of A/V Technologies for Higher Education, along with Extron's Global Configurator Training. The Training took place at Extron's USA facility located in Anaheim, CA. The first day covered analog vs. digital signals and their applications in the A/V industry. Also covered was maintaining signal integrity when designing AV Technology into classroom spaces. The second day featured signal processing, along with new technologies and products. The third day covered configuring Extron IP-Link products for remote control and monitoring of technology spaces like those used here at Syracuse University. |
SU's New Green Data Center Attracts National Attention
Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina Hosts Key Partners at Groundbreaking
A brighter future for energy efficiency and information technology on campus and across the world was welcomed under cloudy skies Friday, May 29, at the groundbreaking ceremony for SU's new data center. Eric Spina, Vice Chancellor and Provost of Syracuse University, played host to the key partners in the project, who each made remarks:
- Vijay Lund, VP Operations, Systems and Technology Group, IBM
- New York State Senator David Valesky
- New York State Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli
- Francis J. Murray, Jr., President and CEO of the NY State Energy Research Development Authority
SU's Office of News services published a comprehensive media release on 5/29 and a wide array of media outlets quickly picked up the story, ranging from the Syracuse Post Standard and News 10 Now to Business Week, ZDNet News and CNet News.  Eric Spina, Bill Magnarelli, Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Assemblywoman Joan Christensen, Francis Murray, Jr., Christopher Sedore, Dave Valesky and Vijay Lund break ground for SU's Green Data Center.
The new data center is scheduled to open this fall, and be operational by January, 2010.
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Join the ITS Corporate Challenge Team
Help SU Defend ITS Largest Participation Award on June 23
The Chase Corporate Challenge is an annual 3.5-mile walk/run that brings local businesses together to promote health and exercise. This year's event will take place Tuesday, June 23, beginning at 6:25 p.m. at Onondaga Lake Parkway. SU is defending the "Largest Participation Award" earned with a team of 363 faculty and staff at last year's Corporate Challenge.
SU will provide participating faculty and staff with a free t-shirt and a light dinner of grilled chicken, salad and dessert after the race.
Fast facts about the Challenge:
- Participants may walk or run the 3.5-mile course.
- SU pays the $30 per person fee for faculty and staff who participate.
- Chase will make a charitable donation to the Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection as part of the Corporate Challenge.
- Guests of SU employees are welcome to enjoy the hospitality tent and may purchase the light dinner at the cost of the meal--$14 per person. Tickets for guests may be purchased (cash or personal check payable to Syracuse University) from the Office of Human Resources, Skytop Office Building, prior to June 12. Tickets will not be available the day of the race.
For more information, click here or contact SU's Corporate Challenge team captain at 443-2488. |
Updates
Keeping current with software, systems and devices
ITS Network Design and Development Explores Next Generation Data Center Technology: Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
ITS Network Design and Development is researching next-generation technologies for potential implementation in SU's new data center. On the radar is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) which converges Fibre Channel storage fabrics and Ethernet onto a single data center highway. This technology has the potential to increase hardware efficiency, simplify cabling schemes, reduce the amount of heat generated by each server, and do so while utilizing existing storage area networks (SANs).
 Classic Fibre Channel (FC) is a gigabit-speed data center technology which provides connectivity to enterprise SANs. Syracuse University's production Fibre Channel network provides connectivity to terabytes of storage resource for hundreds of application and database servers located in Machinery Hall. Servers merge onto Fibre Channel highways via installed Fibre Channel interface cards called Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) which have single or multi-mode fibre interfaces. The takeaway here is that classic Fibre Channel implementations are themselves complete networks existing within data centers - consisting of interface cards, cabling, and storage switches defining Fibre Channel fabrics.
Classic Ethernet networks consist of hosts/servers with installed Ethernet network interface cards (NICs) which provide access to Ethernet topologies at speeds of 10/100/1000 Mbps - typically over twisted pair copper cables. These data cables connect hosts to Ethernet switches which are connected to other switches and/or routers - creating a typical Ethernet network topology. In 2008, 10Gbps Ethernet products from virtually all hardware vendors began to flood the market. 10Gbps Ethernet is one of the primary enabling technologies for FCoE.
FCoE converges FC onto 10Gbps Ethernet by encapsulating complete FC frames inside of 10Gb Ethernet frames. This encapsulation is performed by FCoE Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) installed in data center servers. The CNAs replace the Fibre Channel HBAs and the Ethernet NICs installed in the servers and by doing so reduce power consumption. FCoE also enables the reduction of cabling to/from data center servers from two cables providing FC and Ethernet connectivity to a single cable combining the transmit/receive of both FC and Ethernet.
Along with the FCoE-enabling technologies, 10Gbps Ethernet and Converged Network Adapters, is the development of Unified Switching Fabrics within network switching hardware. Unified Switching Fabrics enable network switches to determine if the frame received is carrying Fibre Channel payload and if so to remove the Fibre Channel frame and forward it to the appropriate Fibre Channel resource - as defined by Fibre Channel standards preserved by FCoE. Designed to support FCoE, these network switches enable data centers to reduce the number of Fibre Channel storage switches deployed in classic Fibre Channel topologies.
Unified Switching Fabrics also support enhancements to Ethernet which mimic Fibre Channel's lossless frame transmission enabled by FC Buffer-to-Buffer credits. Enhanced Ethernet is capable of lossless frame transmission via Priority Flow Control - IEEE 802.1Qbb which is an enhancement of the PAUSE Frame protocol defined in IEEE 802.3 - Annex 31B. Priority Flow Control is expected to be approved by standards bodies in April 2009.
by Peter Rounds
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ITidbits
Facts and figures about IT
In the 30 days ending 4/21/09, SU's servers sent and received 21,627,330 email messages, of which 9,531,987 were "safe" or "not spam" and 12,095,343 (all the rest) were spam. That's more than 500 emails a minute, more than 56% of which is spam. For the six months ending April 30, the ITS website had 122,009 unique visitors who received 603,443 pageviews in the course of 225,994 total visits, an average of 1,248.6 visits per day. The peak day was Friday, March 13, 2009 with 3,783 visits. About 25 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics-computers, DVD players, stereos, TVs-is consumed while the products are turned off. |
IT4SU Online Student Survey Completed Successfully
Findings drive changes in labs, support. Final report now available on web.
The IT4SU online survey focusing on student use and opinions about ITS's computer labs and support services is complete. Learning Environments and Media Production (LEMP), which manages the public computer labs, is finding the survey results valuable.
"We have already taken action on some of the significant issues," said Dave Tiedemann, Director of LEMP. "We're testing different machine optimizations to speed login, and have purchased and installed duplex printing options for the six printers in three of our busiest labs (Kimmel, Schine, & Goldstein). Students expressed a desire for smaller labs as an alternative to larger, busier, & noisier labs as well as a need for more group study and presentation rehearsal spaces. This feedback confirms the re-distribution of the Link 102 lab to the new labs with group study options in Schine & CST."
The survey, a collaborative effort among ITS, the Maxwell School, the iSchool and the SU Library, has yielded a rich collection of data concerning student computing at SU. It was developed and the data analyzed by Steve Andress, Huseyin Arslan, Patrick Lauzon and Lauren Newman as their capstone project in professor Steve Sawyer's IST 466 Professional Issues in Information Management and Technology class.
Among the findings:
- 88% of students own laptops, while 12% own desktops.
- 79% use Windows (39% XP, 40% Vista); while 25% use Mac.
- The top three reasons students use the public labs are that they didn't have a personal computer with them, they needed lab software they don't own, and they don't own a printer.
- Of the top specific lab services used frequently, 80% of responders were satisfied with printing, 77% were satisfied with general computing (e.g. browsing & email), and 64% were satisfied with specific software.
- Overall, more than 92% of students are satisfied with SU public labs & lab computers (25% somewhat satisfied, 52% satisfied, and 16% very satisfied). Satisfaction was highest among seniors and lowest among freshmen.
- Trouble shooting preference was 65% for live support and 35% for online documentation. Almost 60% prefer FAQs online, and almost 44% expressed a preference for YouTube videos for online support.
- 75% of students would prefer to get live support at a Service Center, with 56% preferring telephone support
- 62% of responders were aware of the laptop loaner program at Bird Library, and almost 7% reported using the service once a week.
Analysis of the survey findings will be ongoing, and insights gained will help ITS develop and deploy resources to best meet students' computing needs. Anyone with ideas for analyzing the data is invited to contact Dave Tiedemann or Jenny Gluck to discuss. The final survey report is available for download at http://its.syr.edu/IT4SU/survey-finalreport.doc.
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Successful Implementation of OnBase in the Slutzker Center for International Services
Collaborative effort increases efficiency, effectiveness while cutting costs
The Slutzker Center (SCIS) is a part of the Division of Student Affairs, and serves the International community of the entire University; faculty, staff, students, and scholars. SCIS needed a document management solution that would expedite paper processing and meet all retention guidelines and security measures, in compliance with Federal and University law and policy. They have a high volume of student files and immigration records which must be organized and maintained securely, while allowing for effective and efficient retrieval. Beginning in May of 2008, the Student Affairs Distributed Support Program (DSP) group and members of the SCIS staff began the discovery phase of the project. Once we completed the project plan, we began the design, construction and implementation of the system before the end of the year. This implementation of OnBase was a truly collaborative effort. Resources from SCIS, Division of Student Affairs (DSA) Technical Services, Energy and Computing Management (ECM), and Information Technology and Services (ITS) were all involved at different stages of the project. ECM provided project management and planning, vendor contact, and previous installation expertise. ITS created the Autofill tables, to pull data from PeopleSoft for each individual record, and was involved with ECM in setting up the back-end of the system and troubleshooting the implementation in the test environment before it went live. SCIS, DSA Tech Services, ECM, and ITS remain involved in supporting the system. Staff and user training was complete by March, and OnBase went live in the Slutzker Center in April. The scanning/imaging of their existing documents continues, but the users love the system and are easily adapting to its use. The OnBase implementation should both increase document management efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce costs significantly as the use of paper (and toner, and folders, and other supplies) decreases. This project is a great example of how a collaborative effort across many far-flung University departments and divisions can bring even a large and challenging project to completion effectively, correctly, and with a solid technical foundation. By Katie McCaffery |
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Why should we care about green data centers?
They cost less, use less, emit less and are more reliable
Every time you send email, register your car, pay a credit card bill or download from iTunes you're depending on a data center. Data centers house the people and equipment which manage, store and disseminate the data that make all these possible. The nonstop growth of the internet and electronic record keeping and commerce means data centers are growing larger, more numerous and more important.
As energy prices rise, and data centers proliferate, electricity bills for data centers skyrocket. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data centers nationwide by 2011 annually will consume 100 billion kWh of electricity at a cost of $7.4 billion, an increase of more than 360% in ten years. Their load on the power grid is equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants, and if current growth trends continue, will require an additional 10 power plants. That's similar to the amount of electricity used by 10.6 million average households.
For most large organizations, data centers are the single largest consumers of electricity. It's no surprise that electricity usage has become a major concern. Indeed, rising electricity costs and uncertainty of electricity supply have resulted in owners of large server farms, including Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, locating their operations near low-cost, highly reliable hydroelectric power stations.
 Green data centers are designed and operated for high energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. This includes the data center's information technology systems (computers, networks and peripherals) as well as its building systems (HVAC, lighting and mechanical). Improving energy efficiency has the technical potential to reduce electricity use by as much as 55%, a cost savings of $5.1 billion by 2011.
Going green is about more than saving money; it's also about reducing environmental impacts. The efficiency gains described above would reduce the peak electric load by the equivalent of up to 15 new power plants, and correspond to nationwide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions of as much as 47 million metric tons in 2011.
Energy efficient data centers are more reliable. The amount of electricity available to a data center is finite, and if that capacity is exceeded the local power grid crashes. Reducing usage increases the available power reserve and thus reduces the likelihood of outages and fluctuations. It also reduces backup power capacity requirements.
Green data center operations are bolstered, too. Lower operating temperatures improve equipment performance, which degrades as temperatures rise. The work environment will be more comfortable and healthier, due to improved temperature, ventilation and lighting, leading to happier staff and higher productivity. Green data centers will have improved public perceptions, higher employee pride and morale and stronger organizational reputations.
Ultimately, green data centers cost less, use less, emit less, are more reliable and work better. They're more sustainable and better neighbors and workplaces, and will more easily satisfy the insatiable thirst for the services they enable. As thirsty as we are, we should care about green data centers because we can't afford not to.
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IT Connections is published monthly by Information Technology and Services at Syracuse University. Please submit story ideas and news items to Chris Finkle. |
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