Ecos Environmental Consulting Firm Cuts Own Datacenter's Annual Power Usage by 41 Percent

For over a decade Ecos has helped companies reduce energy use, manage carbon emissions and implement environmentally sustainable practices to make the most significant impact on the vitality of both their businesses and our planet. What more powerful way is there to promote that message than to put it into action?

"We have improved our redundancy, which results in greater availability and uptime; security has been enhanced; and we are expecting better overall performance of all our systems." - Jamie Daubenspeck
IT Director
Ecos Consulting

Ecos took steps in 2008 to achieve a 41-percent reduction in power consumption within its own IT operations. The move is equivalent to saving greenhouse gas emissions from 1,002 gallons of gasoline each year, or the carbon that is sequestered annually by two acres of pine or fir forests.

The Challenges

Based on current growth rates, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by 2011 datacenters nationwide will consume almost twice the amount of electricity as they did in 2006 (InformationWeek, "EPA Recommends Curbing Datacenter Energy Consumption," Aug. 3, 2007). In a self-audit prior to the project, Ecos IT Director Jamie Daubenspeck noted Ecos would benefit from an infrastructure overhaul. Older hardware that consumed exorbitant amounts of energy was a factor in the environmental inefficiencies.

In light of everything for which Ecos stands, Daubenspeck pledged to make a change. A big change.

A complete overhaul of the infrastructure was necessary. A local VMware® sales representative referred Ecos to MSI Systems Integrators (MSI) for professional Virtualization & Consolidation best practices and expertise. Strategic consolidation and virtualization would keep datacenter energy use in check while providing a much more sound backbone for the firm's rapidly expanding business requirements.

Ecos wanted the project to accomplish several things:

• Significant power consumption savings in alignment with its business mission to nurture a greener planet
• More business agility to quickly deliver services to both internal and external customers
• Cost savings
• A smaller footprint in the server room

The Ecos Solution

The Ecos and MSI teams consolidated, virtualized and replaced existing hardware with three HP® ProLiant™ DL 380 servers, HP MSA Storage, and an HP SAN Switch. The space-saving features of the HP DL 380s pack the storage, memory and I/O Ecos needs into only 2U of rack space per server. Less hardware means lower maintenance costs from both the servers and the cooling systems. Plus, by freeing up valuable rack space, the solution gives Ecos plenty of room to grow.

Software included Microsoft® Office® applications, BRP software and VMware Infrastructure VI 3.5-a virtual datacenter operating system that:

• Cuts costs and increases flexibility
• Improves business continuity
• Runs fewer servers with a dynamic power-down of unused servers to conserve energy

MSI provided best practices implementation and hands-on training services throughout the server virtualization project.

The Ecos Benefits

Ecos reported pre- to post-measurement annual energy savings of 12,404 kWh, which is a hefty 41-percent decrease in the power it consumes each year. With much more energy-efficient systems and less physical space required to run the servers, Ecos realized immediate cost savings of $1,240 annually-making both Ecos executives and Planet Earth very happy.

In addition, Ecos' server virtualization solution offers more agility, better overall performance, security and room for growth.

"Storage capacity, memory and processing power have increased by several factors; we've improved our redundancy, which results in greater availability and uptime; security has been enhanced; and we are expecting better overall performance of all our systems," said Daubenspeck.

At the same time Ecos is focusing its efforts on designing innovative and cost-efficient ways for others to take environmental responsibility, it is leading by example through its own green investments.