Sun Microsystems: Energy Efficient IT Hardware Deployment - Implementation
To develop and execute a strategy for improving the efficiency of it's technical infrastructure portfolio, Sun created an independent organization, Global Lab & Datacenter Design Services, with the appropriate authority and financing. Sun began the process by characterizing and auditing it's technical infrastructure portfolio in order to have a well-quantified starting point from which it could measure improvements. They were then able to create programs to drive efficiencies, such as the implementation of a model based upon sharing, institute design standards in new datacenter construction and use hardware replacement as a real estate and energy management strategy. For example, by using hardware replacement to replace their aging equipment with Sun’s current generation of energy-efficient servers, Sun was able to achieve more than an 80-percent reduction in square footage and a 60-percent reduction in utility power.
UPS: Facilities Site Physical Infrastructure (power and cooling) Overhead - Innovation
UPS undertook a comprehensive data center energy efficiency study that benchmarked its power usage against both internal power consumption and figures reported by others in the industry. The data was used to understand the efficiency of the UPS infrastructure, to calculate annual costs to power and cool the usage or the losses, and finally to identify specific categories in which to reduce energy consumption. Improvements that would provide the greatest returns without compromising reliability were identified and implemented for significant energy savings
AOL LLC: Facilities Site Physical Infrastructure (power and cooling) Overhead - Implementation
World class results may be achieved, not through one ‘magic bullet’, and indeed perhaps not through ‘new knowledge’ or new cooling technologies, but rather by careful design and diligent operations and management of all building systems and their components. AOL tracked the components of what people now call the PUE since 2001 (total building load and critical load), and its data shows that since start-up, the centers have operated at world class standards. World-class PUE is thought to be between 1.8 and 2.0, with some more standard data centers having PUEs of 3.3. AOL demonstrated a consistently achievable PUE of <1.6 through its diligent operations and management practices.
NetApp: IT Hardware Asset Utilization - Implementation
The NETAPP approach to fighting rapidly growing power consumption is simple: subtract machines and disks from the power equation by using storage more efficiently. This strategy has many corollary benefits: it lowers complexity, lowers people costs, lowers support and service costs, and improves network efficiency and performance. NetApp’s storage consolidation initiative increased storage utilization from less than 40% to an average of 60%, reduced storage footprint from 24.83 racks to 5.48, reduced the total number of storage systems from 50 to 10, and decreased direct power consumption by 41,184 kWh per month.
Bank of Montreal: IT Hardware Asset Utilization - Innovation
Founded in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, BMO Financial Group is today a highly diversified North American financial services provider. BMO operates and manages in a centralized IT model with the majority of critical processing being consolidated into two large data centers (Tier III and Tier IV), with 15 Tier II greater than 5,000 square feet raised floor environments geographically distributed throughout the world. In early 2004, the BMO capacity planning processes identified a disturbing consumption curve for its core data center facilities. Instead of relying on new data centers scheduled to come online in the near future, BMO initiated a major organizational change to re-align Corporate Real Estate (CRE) and Enterprise Infrastructure (IT) roles and responsibilities. This new organizational structure has enabled BMO to aggressively optimize and continuously improve its IT energy efficiency.
Hewlett Packard: IT Strategy - Implementation
In 2005, Hewlett Packard’s Global Information Technology function began a three-year transformation program of unprecedented scale. It included building six new, next generation data centers to replace more than 85 legacy locations that were greater than 5,000 square feet, plus hundreds of smaller server locations. It also included rebuilding the company’s global telecommunications infrastructure; implementing a consistent set of technology standards; consolidating and modernizing applications; and improving the governance process to better align IT with HP corporate priorities. The speed with which the program was tackled—three years—is a part of the innovative, unique approach by senior management. During the transformation program we are reducing the IT application portfolio from more than 6,000 applications to 1,600 through consolidation and retirement efforts. The legacy environment had approximately 23,000 servers installed with an average age of seven years. As we complete transformation we are reducing this to less than 14,000 new servers, bringing benefits in energy efficiency, reliability and improved density.
