John Milner Programme Manager JISC 31st March 2011 EAUC John Milner Programme Manager JISC

Who needs a Data Centre?

YOU DO! But you don’t need to own all of it Answer YOU DO! But you don’t need to own all of it You need on site capability to be minimised and extremely efficient (PUE 1.2 is doable in a small DC as Hertfordshire showed) You need to deploy virtualised servers and storage wherever you can You need to be “Cloud Ready”

The Universities Modernisation Fund Intended to drive the shared services agenda Focus on Research and Admin, but will have implications for Learning and Teaching too Seeking savings and efficiencies both short and long term Recognises the need for a coherent approach to the issues from the sector because piecemeal isn’t working

The Modernisation Strategy Establish a brokerage at JANET(UK)and JISC to develop framework agreements with major operators and application suppliers Define and market trusted services into the sector (Can’t just use Amazon, Google and Dropbox without risk management) Institutions to rent services (short or long term through proper framework deals) not build DC and buy kit SaaS PaaS IaaS all are relevant and depend on that move to virtualisation and on persuading some application suppliers to change their business models The approach can have benefits in research, learning and teaching and administration Realise industrial economies of scale - 50000 server environment 7 times better than 1000 server environment

Local Provision Hertfordshire showed that using similar attention to detail as the “big boys” returns similar efficiency levels The key is to minimise redundant cycles and bits in an environment that is economical by design Cloud technology and virtualisation offers efficiency in deployment and redeployment of resources The idea that you need control of the equipment to control the service is nonsense There is no escape from local desktop and server provision because some applications won’t work properly in a cloud or virtual environment, so local and/or CoLo won’t go away

Green is not the point Just getting your energy from a windmill doesn’t cut it Reducing resource consumption is what’s needed and it can be arranged at relatively modest investment cost It’s all about efficiency and money is the measuring stick we should use. Acting in a coherent fashion the Sector has massive opportunities for savings as well as added value from research data management for example.

The Hertfordshire Example

Questions Any Questions? j.milner@jisc.ac.uk