by Roger Bearpark, Assistant Head of ICT at London Borough of Hillingdon — November 03, 2010
The London Borough of Hillingdon recently earned a place in the final three of the 2010 Gartner Green Data Center Excellence Awards, to be held on Monday November 22nd. It is an accolade we are proud of, and one we feel can help to dispel a myth that is too widely accepted in the storage industry. Contrary to popular belief, virtualisation can be accomplished without the need to learn a whole new skill set, and going green is less about environmental altruism in business, but more about making shrewd cost savings that directly affect your bottom line.
Since virtualising our storage and server footprint through Compellent and VMware, we have:
- Running over 90% of our servers, or 200 virtual machines, on nine physical platforms, including provision for DR, cutting the ICT space we occupy by 65% and power consumption by over 80%
- Saved > £93,000 on our annual energy bill
- Saved the generation of 171 tonnes of carbon emissions each year
- Reduced the 3 year cost per Terabyte of storage by >70%
- Lowered our carbon footprint by 20% over 18 months whilst accommodating the growth required by the organisation
What is more, our deployment was easy, and that is testament to the quality of the people involved. For such results to be achieved, you need to a mix the right technology with the right support, and Compellent has been there with us every step of the way.
Alongside our VMware deployments, Compellent’s support has underpinned what really counts – results. Many companies talk about difficult journeys, struggles and competing priorities with their moves to virtualisation. This story is different. For sure, there is some extraordinary technology inside those cabinets, but it is the people who have been inspired to develop it that count.
Working with a team that has the confidence and ability to make the journey a simple one is what makes green storage a reality. It is the people who have shared our ethos to be innovative and unafraid to do things differently who have ensured we have achieved an environment that Gartner deems worthy of excellence.
Flattering praise indeed; but our current results are not a final destination. They are a stop on the way to greater things, and therein lies the real result for a public sector organisation. What the people from Hillingdon, Compellent and other partners have achieved means that we offer better services at reduced cost to the people that we are here to serve.
Editor’s Note: Roger Bearpark of London Borough of Hillingdon is a Compellent customer and the contributor of this blog post. To learn more about London Borough of Hillingdon and its use of Compellent systems, please read this case study. Mr. Bearpark is one of the three finalists for the 2010 Green Data Center Excellence Award; if you plan on attending the Gartner Data Center & IT Operations Summit on Nov. 22, please come and support him at 17:40 – 18:30 in Park Plaza Westminster Bridge – Westminster B+C.
by Compellent Technologies, — April 19, 2010
Presented by Dave Cearley, VP and Fellow, Gartner, and Carl Claunch, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner
8:31 – This list has been compiled after looking at what technologies will impact businesses over the next three years—technologies that are reaching maturity or a tipping point and technologies that target mainstream companies.
8:33 – The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but the list will rotate new technology strategies in and out of the list.
8:34 – Recap of the 2009 list compared to the 2010 list. Some strategies have been removed, and new ones have been added, but virtualization remains at the top of the list. Here’s the complete round-up:
- Virtualization
- Cloud computing
- BI & Advanced Analytics
- Client Computing
- Social Computing
- Mobile Applications
- Security: Activity Monitoring
- Reshaping the Data Center
- IT for Green
- Storage-Class Memory
8:35 – Starting with cloud computing. Gartner defines cloud computing as "a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided as a service to customers using Internet technologies." Cloud computing takes things that have happened over the last 10 – 15 years, like SaaS, virtualization, etc., and pulls them together to provide a new target on how data centers and infrastructures are being delivered and applications are being designed.
8:37 – The five broad categories of service are:
- System infrastructure (IaaS)
- Application infrastructure (PaaS)
- Applications (SaaS)
- Information
- Business Services
8:39 – There are three focal points for cloud projects:
- Consuming public cloud services
- Implementing private cloud-computing environments
- Developing cloud-based applications and solutions
8:41 – When consuming cloud-computing services, the IT department’s responsibility will vary depending on the cloud model chosen. Different service models place different levels of management ability on IT. The more capabilities that are put into the cloud, the less control the enterprise has over them.
8:45 – Virtualization is advancing in many ways. It’s a very old technique in computer science—introduced in 1950’s. What’s changing is how we use it. We can now ignore the boundaries of the limitations of the server or storage box. There’s been a real explosion in a number of areas. Server virtualization is the hottest trend, and the goal is to cut costs and improve the overall use of the data center. Still, the minority of all workloads are running from virtualization.
8:47 – Over time, there’s a shift in virtualization. Companies that adopted it for cost cutting want to use it for increased scalability, flexibility and testing environments.
8:49 – One thing to keep in mind is that virtualization adds complexity, and complexity can create errors. When implementing virtualization, make sure that it won’t negatively impact the rest of the organization. When moving resources around with virtualization, workloads are going to shift.
8:53 – Virtualization goes beyond simple consolidation. The potential of a live migration capability eliminates downtime in the event of a failure. It also eliminates extra equipment – like high-availability equipment, fault-tolerant servers and more.
8:57 – Many of the things we thought about building the data center for so many years is actually wrong. It’s far more efficient to split the data center into power zones of high-, medium- and low-density equipment, based on workload mix.
9:00 – Green IT means more than energy-efficient IT. In only a few sectors do the primary contributors to an enterprise’s carbon footprint come from IT. So the question becomes, how much of a contribution to the overall green footprint will green IT make? Other green strategies include carbon tracking, smart building technology, teleworking, optimizing transportation of goods and remote communication and collaboration to reduce travel.
9:03 – Even though IT may not have a huge impact on the overall carbon footprint, it does make a large contribution.
9:08 – Mobile Applications: Many tens of thousands of new and more powerful applications are coming online, and the trend seems to be accelerating. Mobile applications need new servers to which they can connect.
9:10 – The next wave of business intelligence is here. The current PCs and cell phones are so powerful that enterprises can simulate or model the future before making strategic decisions. Before, enterprises would offer customers the same products and treat everyone the same. There was then a shift to data-driven decision making. Now, enterprises can look into analytics that present overall effects on the business for every business transaction.
9:14 – Web 2.0 and social software has a lot of applications, like social networking, social collaboration, social media and social validation. Enterprises need to look into the use-case scenarios. Successful companies blend business social software, customer community and public social media strategies.
9:18 – Storage Class Memory: The penultimate issue. There are interesting things going on in storage today, and one of the most impactful is flash memory. Flash is persistent, and doesn’t need to be powered to retain information. Flash memory allows the data center to access data much faster than disk drives. It shouldn’t be treated as just more memory or more disks. There needs to be a management layer that optimizes the memory. By moving some information or data to flash or SSDs, the data center can experience much improved performance. While flash is much more expensive, there are interesting cases that show how flash can dramatically benefit the business. It goes beyond simply adding tiers of storage, and changes the way applications are designed and performed.
by Andy Hardy, Managing Director, Dell Compellent International — June 25, 2009
The Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
June 24, 2009
Dear Prime Minister:
Compellent welcomes, in principle, the Global Action Plan’s call on Central Government for a £1 billion IT stimulus package that will lead to smarter, more environmentally efficient, higher quality public services.
The recession has clearly forced public and private organisations to look harder at technology investments, especially anything labelled as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally
efficient’ IT. Organisations have had to move quickly to cull any fuzzy, nice-to-have green IT options. Only green IT that clearly delivers greater efficiencies, with measureable and sustainable cost-benefits, can make a real difference. Most of the greatest recent innovations in true technology efficiency, for example server
and storage virtualisation, have sprung from agile, fast-growing companies, none of whom has been offered a public role with the Global Action Plan. Instead, it’s the usual IT behemoths with very limited direct claims, or indeed incentives, to offer truly efficient IT, who have put themselves at the head of the line for any state funds.
Subsequently, there is a very grave risk that any stimulus package will be put to highly inefficient use, depriving British public sector organisations of the best technology
options while extending the deployment of ageing, inefficient and power-hungry IT solutions. Much of any stimulus payment, which comes from the taxpayers, will therefore be wasted.
We call on the Global Action Plan and the British government to think very deeply about how any stimulus can be put to best use, based on proven best-practice examples that cite true efficiency in terms of delivering more in terms of a solution, while using less hardware and less energy to deliver it.
The digital future of Britain requires a forward-thinking infrastructure based on today’s technology, not yesterday’s. Such an approach has already been proven to deliver more, but cost less, a concept that the tax-burdened British public will appreciate and welcome.
The nation has had its fill of political cosiness and gross fiscal irresponsibility. This could be an opportunity to start putting things right.