Greenwise-IT Case Studies
In this section we briefly look at some of the
ways Greenwise-IT has helped organisations to reduce their ICT related
energy consumption and save money.
For further details on any of the Case Studies listed below, or if you would like to know more about how Greenwise-IT can help you please contact us at enquiries@Greenwise-it.com.
UK Insurance Company - ICT Carbon Footprint calculation/
Power Usage Estimation & Power usage Reduction
The organisation wanted to understand in detail
their energy usage from ICT equipment. After first agreeing the exact
scope of the assignment the next step was to collect information on the
numbers and types of ICT devices in use, their power rating and usage.
This was needed as the organisation did not yet have an up to date inventory
of the ICT equipment in use.
For some of the standard ICT equipment which runs 24/7, such as network
hubs, switches and routers, energy consumption was easy to calculate.
For other equipment such as PCs the huge range of equipment in use, and
usage patterns made it more difficult to estimate with accuracy. The data
was therefore obtained in a wide variety of ways, power measurements of
sample equipment; measured electrical load; manufacturers’ energy
usage figures (treated rightly with some suspicion).
The final estimate showed that ICT equipment accounted
for approximately 23% of total electricity usage in the organisation.
The energy usage was then broken down by category: servers, PCs, networks,
data centre etc. It was then found that the PCs accounted for over half
(56%) of the total ICT energy usage.
Benefits
Having a clear picture of how much energy is being
consumed by ICT device was the first step to reducing consumption. The
final analysis estimated both the absolute and relative magnitude of energy
consumption associated with the different categories of ICT devices.
From the figures it became clear that the greatest immediate benefits
could be achieved by simply implementing a Power Management scheme for
the PC estate. Six months after this solution was implemented it was calculated
that a saving of around £40,000 in energy costs had already been
achieved.
A further benefit of this assignment was then after the initial audit of ICT equipment a Configuration Management Database was developed which provides on-going accurate information on the ICT inventory. As power usage per Configuration Item was used as a key attribute it is now possible to re-calculate the ICT Carbon Footprint / ICTY Power usage with relatively little effort.
US University – Revised Purchasing policy
and Desktop device rationalisation
After undertaking an ICT Carbon Footprint analysis
it was decided that the highest priority areas for reducing ICT related
energy consumption were the Desktop PCs and the associated distributed
devices.
Because of the nature of the environment it was not felt that a Thin Client
environment would be a practical solution. Therefore the decision was
made to revise the purchasing policy for new PCs to ensure that lower
power devices were the preferred option. The new devices had a peak power
consumption of 80W (the previous preferred model had been 165W).
As a result of an end of life replacement policy within 1 year the new
equipment (although not yet accounting for 25% of the entire Desktop estate)
had reduced average energy consumption from 389 kWh per annum to 244 kWh.
The next initiative was to replace all local printing
and copying with a fully managed central service, utilising larger multi
functional devices (MFD). These are more energy and consumables efficient
for large printing volumes, and can also be powered down more easily when
not in use.
Benefits
From the energy savings related to the new Desktop PCs – it has been estimated that once the entire estate has been replaced by the new lower powered models the annual energy savings will be in the region of $220,000.
The first year savings from the document and print management measures were in the order of $90,000 from reduced paper and consumables.
Canadian Local Government body – Desktop
Virtualisation (Thin Client) and optimised operational support practices
Although the client had a central Head Office the
majority of the business user population were located in small satellite
offices. There were over 120 of these small satellite offices spread over
a very large geographical area. The maximum number of business users in
any single satellite office was 8, with the great majority of offices
having less than half this number.
The primary issue to address was the extremely high
costs of providing support to these offices (and the large carbon footprint
that the support operation was responsible for). The support costs were
unusually high because over time there had been great variation in the
types of Desktops installed, the configuration of the Desktops, the Operating
system and even the versions of the applications being used.
The result was an environment that could not be supported remotely, and
for which even a relatively minor Incident meant a support analysis having
to make a physical visit to site (often involving a return journey of
over 500 miles).
It was calculated that the p.a. Total Cost of Ownership for a single Desktop was in the region of CAD $ 1,300.00. A high proportion of this figure being transport related energy costs.
The solution recommended by Greenwise-IT was to implement a simple standard configuration which could be supported remotely, and this would be based around a single standardised (and low-cost) Thin Client solution.
By implementing such an environment not only could the great majority of support tasks be undertaken remotely, but the hardware spares holding could also be optimised. Alongside the new environment ITIL aligned Incident and Problem Management process were developed and implemented in order to optimise the efficiency of the entire support operation.
Benefits
Cost – the TCO fell to below CAD $150.00
for each Thin Client. In addition the quality of service provided increased
substantially. The number of Priority 1 outages fell by over 80% within
6 months, and the number of Priority 2 outrages fell by over 65% in the
same period. This led to a very substantial rise in Customer Satisfaction!
It was also noted that after the Thin Clients had been installed the energy
bills for each of the local satellite offices fell by between 8-10%.
French Leisure Organisation – Server Virtualisation
Between 2006-2008 the server estate at this organisation
trebled in size from 120 to 360 physical servers. The situation was becoming
critical as the primary Date Centre had no space remaining and the power
capacity was over acceptable limits. At the same time it was recognised
that the average utilisation for the server estate was only around 8%,
with no single server exceeding 40% capacity (at peak load).
After a review of the situation a number of modelling exercises were undertaken
by Greenwise-IT analyse the impact and consequences of continuing growth
in the number of physical servers. The projected total cost of this growth
(including costs associated with increasing the Data Centre capacity)
was unacceptable to the organisation.
The solution proposed by Greenwise-IT was to use a VMware
solution in order ‘virtualise’ the server estate. Using VMware
one host (physical) server can many virtual ‘guest’ servers,
reducing the number of physical servers needed. This solution would have
the following advantages:
• Reducing the number of physical servers
• Reducing data centre complexity
• Improving server availability and utilisation rates
• Providing the flexibility to scale up and grow.
• Reducing Power and cooling costs together with Carbon footprint.
• Reducing the amount of space used
• Simplifying Disaster Recovery
A successful pilot proof of concept was undertaken
to ensure the technical solution would deliver both the anticipated financial
and operational benefits.
Benefits
By July 2009, the organisation had deployed 40
VMware ESX hosts running 400 virtual machines. The virtual servers have
allowed 300 physical servers to be retired.
• Cost savings. The virtual servers provide the equivalent capacity
of 400 physical servers. A saving of €3500 is made on hardware each
time a new virtual machine is deployed.
• Improved Better server utilisation. An estimated 50-70% versus
an average of 8% for the physical servers.
• Reduced power requirement. The 40 hosts require around 15% of
the electricity consumed by the physical servers they replaced.
• Reduced space and resources. The virtual servers require far less
space and weigh one third of the replaced physical infrastructure. This
has removed the need for expenditure in upgrading the primary Data Centre
power capacity, cooling infrastructure, and general physical capacity
etc
• Faster implementation. Now new servers can be commissioned and
installed far faster than with physical servers. Now a new server can
be requested, deployed and available for use in 2 hours compared to a
week for a physical server .
• Flexibility. There is no more flexibility to provide servers where
unexpected requirements arise without commensurate funding being attached.
• Vastly reduced planned downtime. Workloads can be dynamically
moved to different physical servers without downtime or service interruption,
server maintenance can be performed without requiring application and
service downtime.
• Server consolidation and storage virtualisation and consolidation
has provided a saving on management and facility costs through automatic
upgrades, administration of retention policies, simplified back-ups and
restores, etc.
UK Financial organisation – Desktop Power
savings
During the summer of 2009, this large UK based
Financial organisation engaged Greenwise-IT to provide consultancy as
to how they might significantly reduce the environmental impact of the
ICT infrastructure at their 3 primary business locations (two in central
London and one in Manchester).
The first stage was to understand the present situation, and this involved
undertaking a very high level ICT carbon footprint assessment. It soon
became clear that the Desktop PCs represented an abnormally high percentage
of the total ICT energy consumption (above 58%). The reason for this very
straightforward – there was a widespread belief among the user community
that IT had at some time instructed them to never turn PCs off. As a result,
it was estimated that out of a total Desktop population of 12,500 around
7,000 of were believed to be permanently switched on.
It was felt that although a power down software solution would be of obvious benefit it might be more appropriate to simply start with a user education programme. To this end a number of workshops and team briefings were held throughout the user community, and at every opportunity IT spread the message that the PCs should be turned off when not in use. IT also encouraged users to adopt ‘Best Practise’ power management settings. The recommended settings were to activate System standby / hard disk sleep after 5 mins inactivity and no active screensavers (instead users encouraged to turn monitors off if they were not using them or were away from their desk for more than 5 mins).
Benefit
Cost savings. So successful was the user education
initiative that there was never a need to take this further and implement
a software power management solution.
It was calculated that the p.a. electricity savings
arising from this user education imitative were in the order of £320k!
UK Charity – Green ICT Maturity Assessment
The IT division within this organisation had a strong desire to become a ‘Green Champion’ for the entire organisation. They wanted to do more than simply reduce ICT related emissions – their aim was to facilitate and promote Green working practices throughout the business operations of the Charity.
It was agreed that the first step towards this was to undertake a Green ICT Maturity Assessment. This would provide the organisation with a baseline from which to measure improvement over time. It was decided to undertake a Maturity Assessment in preference to a Carbon Footprint measurement because of the wider scope of the Maturity Assessment.
The initial assessment itself took less than 1 week to complete. The level of maturity that was achieved was Level 2 – that is – although there was evidence of Green IT activities taking place, there was no defined and agreed Green IT strategy in place, no overall goals and visions from Green IT, and certainly no monitoring and measuring of ICT related emissions.
Alongside the report a series of recommendations were presented to show the actions required for the organisation to achieve the higher levels of maturity.
The primary benefit of the Green ICT Maturity Assessment to the organisation is that it provided them with a well defined framework for assessment and on-going improvement, and it t also promoted the adoption of a more strategic, proactive and integrated approach (rather than isolated tactical responses) to dealing with the challenges of Green ICT.
After 11 months the organisation invited Greenwise-IT to re-assess the maturity. This time it was found that the maturity level had increased to Level 4. Again a series of recommendations were made to show how the organisation could attain the next (and highest) level of maturity – Level 5.
At this time the organisation are still working toward this goal.
