29 September 2023 - Energy Efficiency IHK meets BUGA: Young Energy Scouts introduce their final project at the Bundesgartenschau
The trainees Ahmad Azizi and David Schöffmann have successfully completed their qualification as IHK Energy Scouts. As part of the project, they investigated how more effective use of server infrastructure can reduce energy consumption. The trainees were made aware of topics relating to energy efficiency in the workplace so that they could identify potential savings in their own operations and initiate measures to achieve them.
Rising energy prices, climate change and changing technologies are all part of the environment in which new ideas around the highly relevant issue of energy efficiency thrive. Finding measures to save energy and implementing them in the workplace are important tools for reducing costs and making IT infrastructure sustainable. The future IT specialists at the URZ play an important role in this process. For the past six years, they have earned the IHK Energy Scouts qualification as part of their training and put their acquired knowledge straight into practice as part of a final project.
IHK meets BUGA: Blooming ambience for flourishing innovation
Ahmad Azizi and David Schöffmann, who have been training to become IT specialists in systems integration since 2021, also completed this additional qualification by taking part in two workshops to identify energy hogs at the URZ. As their central project, they looked at the energy consumption of the server infrastructure and presented their findings at the IHK graduation event at the end of May. In the extraordinary setting of the wooden pavilion in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, Ahmad Azizi presented the results and poster this year, in an aptly green setting, at the Bundesgartenschau (BuGa23) in Mannheim.
Saving energy through server consolidation
"The goal of the project was to reduce energy consumption by using the server
infrastructure more effectively, and thus save on energy costs as well as
licensing and support costs," explains David Schöffmann. The focus is on
server consolidation, which involves merging multiple physical servers and
migrating them to a more powerful server.
First, the two trainees mapped
certain servers at the Computing Centre and then identified those that could
be made more energy efficient by consolidating them. "This action would save
over 6000 kWh of energy along with the corresponding costs and CO₂ emissions,"
explains Ahmad Azizi. The project also found fertile ground at the URZ,
allowing the team to begin concrete implementation. At the University
Computing Centre, we are thus taking another step towards an energy-efficient
IT infrastructure, and with the growing number of IHK Energy Scouts, we are
continuing to build on the wealth of ideas of our young team members.
