Our green data centre wins gold award for the third time
The University of St Andrews has, for the third time, achieved the highest level of award for the performance and green design of its data centre. Following a rigorous re-assessment process this summer, we have just been advised it has retained the GOLD award under the Certified Energy Efficient Datacenter Award (CEEDA) Scheme.
L:R – Alan Sumner, Project Coordinator; Steve Watt, Chief Information Officer; John Booth Assessor & Technical Lead, CEEDA; Ian McDonald, Network and Infrastructure Team Leader; David Stutchfield, Sustainability Manager; Dean Drew, Associate Chief Information Officer
Built at a cost of £2.4 million, the data centre was opened in 2011, with the aims of carbon neutrality for energy supply, reducing energy usage and costs and providing an efficient, reliable and scalable facility. The data centre only uses energy from renewable sources and
the energy efficient design saves the University between £65,000 – £75,000 per year in electricity costs. The data centre has brought significant incalculable benefits, through significantly improved ICT system availability in a safe and secure environment. This has allowed for large-scale e-enablement projects of business processes to be completed over the last few years.
Nick Morris, Head of Product and Strategy, CEEDA at DataCenter Dynamics commented on the University’s third GOLD award: “From the very start, the design of the data centre fully integrated fundamental principles of scalable energy efficiency, with an eye on significant anticipated service growth. This was reflected in their first assessment cycle in 2012. What is truly outstanding is that the initial approach taken, and improvements put in place year on year have matched evolving best practice – which is a testament to the flexibility of the design and the ability of the data centre operations team.
The Assessor, John Booth, Technical Lead (worldwide) for CEEDA said: “Once again the data centre operations team at the University of St Andrews have provided an excellent evidence pack to support the CEEDA auditors in the re-assessment of their data centre. I’m delighted that the University will retain its GOLD award for adopting in full the requirements of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres and the CEEDA criteria.”
Steve Watt, Chief Information Officer said: “We are absolutely delighted to achieve the CEEDA Gold standard again. We take our corporate social responsibility very seriously and developing an energy-efficient data centre is part of this. We continue to be the only University in the world with this award, which is a very positive reflection on the skills, expertise and dedication of our IT Services and Estates colleagues”.