The University’s Information Services Directorate has been awarded £50k funding from JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) to carry out a pilot study into more sustainable data storage.

Planet Filestore will investigate the provision of more energy efficient data storage that requires less physical space. The aim of the project is to use a system which automatically identifies the files which are used less often, and then moves them into green storage, which typically uses lower power high-density disks.  All data will still be instantly accessible for users.

Rob Bristow, JISC Programme Manager, said: “In the context of the UK higher education sector, which is estimated to hold one and a half million computers and spend around £116m on ICT-related electricity per year, it is vital to consider the sustainability of the services we provide. JISC’s Greening ICT programme aims at delivering a number of activity strands to realise benefits and improvements to sustainability across the sector.

“We are pleased to be working with Information Services at Cardiff University on this exciting project, which we hope will bring real benefits to the future of sustainable filestore in Higher Education across the UK.”

The results of the project, which is due to complete in December 2010, will be relevant to the whole of the further and higher education community.

Paul Rock, Project Leader and the University’s Information Services’ Principal Consultant Engineer, added: “Not only is this pilot project a great opportunity for Information Services and Cardiff, its findings will hopefully benefit the entire higher education sector, bringing wide-ranging lessons and a solid demonstration of what the more sustainable technology can achieve. Interacting with JISC’s work in Research Data Management will ensure that the results from this pilot project will benefit the whole community.”