The Soft Pitch

I wanted to write about Avnet’s award for the “greening” of its data center, then I saw that one of our IT directors has written about it internally and he has provided a much better write up than I could – so this comes from Bruce Gorshe, IT Director – Data Center Operations.  The list of small and big things show, Kermit the Frog got it all wrong. It can be easy to be green, you just have to be a little bit innovative:

Green Computing, Energy Efficiency and the Data Center – Avnet won!

Avnet was selected as the winner of InfoWorld’s 2009 “Best Practices in Green Computing, Energy Efficiency and the Datacenter.”

Jennifer McConnell (Director, IT) accepted the award for Avnet at the “Storage Networking World” annual storage convention held in Scottsdale, Arizona. The award represented the cumulative efforts of multiple teams and demonstrates how Avnet is a leader in the Green IT space.

Jennifer McConnell Accepting SNW Award

The winning entry included these main points, specifically, Avnet:

• Consolidated more than 300 pieces of hardware by retiring or collapsing systems into larger vertically-scaled servers.
• Created a heavily virtualized environment with 24 VMware ESX hosts supporting 378 virtual guests
• Deployed 15 product AIX frames, representing 538 systems across only 39 physical systems.
• Installed StorageTek’s Virtual Storage Manager system to move a storage area network environment.
• Replaced older less efficient air conditioners with newer air conditioners, which were more power efficient.
• Re-foamed the ceiling of its datacenter roof and applied additional insulation.
• Installed “subzero” air flow leakage cubes and high-flow perforated tiles.
• Replaced 250 T12 lighting ballasts with more efficient T08 ballasts.
• Developed a script that would run on all desktop and laptop systems connected to the datacenter to automatically place idle systems in hibernation.

The gains from these changes included:

• Avoided spending more than $5 million to expand the power supply to its datacenter.
• Decreased power consumption by 44% per image through its vertical scaling and virtualization efforts. It also freed a considerable amount of valuable raised flooring space within Avnet’s datacenter. Avnet now has 5,000 square feet of available raised flooring, up from 1,000 square feet, allowing Avnet to avoid structural build-outs costs.
• The new room air conditioners are 20% more efficient.
• Re-foaming the datacenter ceiling and applying additional insulation lowered Avnet’s datacenter cooling costs by $7500 per year, and increased the longevity of the cooling systems and roof.
• The “subzero” air flow leakage cubes and high-flow perforated tiles helped improve air flow by 90%.
• The new power efficient lighting reduced related costs by 30%.
• By placing idle computers in hibernation during non-business hours, Avnet will save an estimated $150,000 annually. Also, it significantly reduced Avnet’s power consumption. A desktop PC consumes approximately 137 watts of electricity; however, by placing it in hibernation, it only consumes one watt.