Syracuse University plans to break ground this spring for yet another construction project – a new green data center on South Campus.

The Skytop Road facility will house the servers that control all of the university’s electronic information, said Eric Beattie, director of the Office of Campus Planning, Design and Construction. That information includes research findings, student records and all the software programs SU provides.

Machinery Hall, the stone building the information is currently housed in, has been around for 102 years. It became the university’s mainframe for computing in the 1970s, Beattie said. The space is getting old, and the equipment is starting to wear. A few years back, the department knew they’d have to start looking for a solution, before time caught up with the old building.

‘We determined the university needed to completely rebuild that facility or build a new one,’ Beattie said. ‘There’s really no way to redo the old one and keep it still functioning. You can’t shut down the network.’

Last winter, the university started working with Information Technology and Services to plan a solution.

It’s a new partnership with IBM, which is co-sponsoring the project. Beattie said there is a budget estimate, but declined to provide a number.

The goal is to make the center, which is still in its design phase, as energy-efficient as possible, Beattie said. It will use natural gas-fired microturbines and absorption chillers to produce its own electricity, heating and cooling. Whatever electricity it doesn’t need will be transferred to the building next door, which will lower the need for energy production in that facility.

The building will be used primarily for computing work, and it will require large amounts of clean electrical power and a power backup system, Beattie said. It also has to be temperature-controlled.

‘Computer centers consume a lot of energy,’ Beattie said. ‘They’re natural energy hogs. We’re designing this system to optimize the energy it uses.’

The heat the building produces from generating its own electricity can be turned into air conditioning, which will keep the system’s computers at a cool and regulated temperature, Beattie said.

The building, still in its design phase, is expected to be operational in late fall.

Another part of IBM’s corporate relationship with the university is a $1.8 million three-year research program, according to the Office of Campus Planning, Design and Construction’s Web site.

It will form a university-wide research team to analyze the performance ratings of IBM’s other data centers, then compare those findings with the South Campus Green Data Center.

‘There will be faculty and students involved in the center’s research,’ Beattie said. ‘IBM is trying to make the perfect data center facility.’

shmelike@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm