• Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linked In
T. 0845 034 7222   E. ict@bluechip.uk.com
view counter
Disaster Recovery
It’s only a disaster if you haven’t got a plan. When things go wrong it is the way you respond and how quickly, that will set your business apart. However, spending cash reserves on something that will only be used sparingly, if at all, is painful for anyone. Can you afford to say no...
Learn More Here
 
view counter

McCarthy and Stone

Britain's leading retirement builder McCarthy and Stone looked to virtualisation specialist Blue Chip to review its data centre and assess the viability of consolidating their server estate by adopting a virtualisation strategy using VMware technologies.

The primary driver for this activity was the increasing electricity costs of running so many servers within the data centre in Bournemouth.

Key Findings

The key findings from this review were:

  1. 46% annual electricity spend savings
  2. Reduction in the number of servers from 32 to 6
  3. Reduction in air conditioning units by 33%

Methodology

  1. Manual discovery of the servers.
  2. PlateSpin PowerRecon was deployed to discover the standard operating parameters for each system.
  3. Reports were run to determine which servers could be virtualised and what specification of servers would be required.
  4. The Watts and BTU/hr output of all existing devices within the data centre was collected to determine power consumption.
  5. The Watts and BTU/hr output of all proposed devices was calculated to determine power consumption.
  6. Determine the required cooling for the Current and Proposed data centres.
  7. Calculate the current electrical spend and proposed electrical spend over a year.

Conclusion

From this detailed investigation we have found that substantial savings can be made; valuable space can be freed up and ongoing management time can be reduced.

Industry experience of virtualising server infrastructures demonstrates that these findings are corroborated across a variety of vertical sectors and the savings for larger estates can be even greater. Results from a recent virtualisation project at a UK University found when accounting for staff time, energy differences and licensing costs, the savings for consolidating 36 servers into virtual machines was in the region of £53,000 a year; approximately £1,500 per server.

As with virtualisation projects across the globe this one would also yield:

  • On-going savings with server hardware maintenance and support
  • Reduced management costs across the server estate
  • Reduced server deployment timeframes and costs
Return to Case Studies