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Challenges of NUS Data Centres NUS provides fast Internet access, secured campus network, 6000 concurrent users' wireless coverage, always on NUSMail handling >1 million transmission daily, 10GB email space for all staff, online module selection & bidding, anytime anywhere exam results retrieval, tap & go for building accesses, and many more Intranet e-services for staff and students. How do we manage all these? Let alone, ever wonder where are all these IT equipments hosted, and under what environmental conditions? At a glimpse, a data centre requires specially-fitted facilities that provide conditioned and uninterruptable power supply against power outages, and special cooling and humidity controlled environment to host the round-the-clock, 24x7 critical IT equipments. Computer Centre operates three Data Centres (DC) with two in the Kent Ridge Campus and another offsite Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) in NUS High School, enabling an always-on for all mission-critical services. In 2005, the average power consumption of 1 server rack is 1.5kw, equivalent to one residential refrigerator. Today, the power consumption of NUS DCs has escalated by 20 folds. Picture this, NUS DCs are like nine 4-room apartments hosting 200 racks of servers. Our daunting challenges to ensure high service availability, and for those working behind the scene have to face with constant IT equipment upgrades, obsolescence, add-on, DC space and budget constraints, unforeseen power trip and security compliance. The significant increase in complexity as additional applications, servers and tools are implemented within data centres to address rising business demands and service level expectations, would require staff resilience, agility and aloofness in managing our DCs. Innovation and emerging technologies today could come with hidden costs. Though server continues to shrink to provide same or better compute power, next generation technologies such as clustering and blade means more can be packed in the same rack space, but resulting in higher power density per rack. To strike a balance, managing power consumption, space, cooling capacity and governance to ensure always-on, high service availability are the challenges we tirelessly embrace, and rest assured that our NUS Data Centres are up 24x7x365, & would Never Sleep!
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