Powys County Council is saving 75% in server and storage
energy costs with a system from Dell.
The Dell system was also chosen to consolidate the council’s
server and storage hardware environment. The deployment of standard
rack-mounted servers and secure, centralised storage, has led to
the authority receiving a 25% faster performance from a much
smaller, and more cost-effective server footprint.
Chris Price, team leader of production services at Powys County
Council, said, “The council hosts three separate IT environments -
Novell Netware, Windows Server 2003 and Linux Slack ware - and 50%
of its data centre had servers that were deployed in 1999, and
which could no longer cope with demand”.
Price said, “When our server farm continued to grow it became
difficult to manage - we needed to find a solution that would give
us greater control over our environment.”
The Dell system was supported by the introduction VMware V13
virtual server software, which allows the council to use one
physical machine to run multiple operating systems
simultaneously.
In doing so, the council has replaced its 80 legacy servers with
just four, Intel-powered
Dell PowerEdge 6850 servers, whilst a
Dell/EMC CX320 storage area network (SAN) and two Dell PowerEdge
1950 servers have enhanced the system for business
continuity.
Price said, “The reduction in servers alone will produce huge
savings in electricity costs, plus we can further reduce the number
of chillers we use to cool the IT environment.”
Dell unveils energy efficient servers >>
Powys County
Council >>
Intel speeds up next-generation chips >>
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