Your cooling bills and carbon footprint are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, hundreds of older servers are coming up for lease renewal. Your boss wants a strategy to solve both of these issues on his desk.
Tomorrow.
9:15 a.m. You log into iTRACS and begin examining current Power Efficiency (P/E) Ratios within the server population. You suspect that most of the older servers coming up for lease are operating below an acceptable P/E Ratio – they’re consuming excessive amounts of energy when compared to the work performed for the business. Those are the servers that must be swapped. But first you have to find them – where are they?
9:45 a.m. You and your team establish an acceptable P/E Ratio for the best practice “green data center” – one that reduces energy bills and shrinks the carbon footprint. Using 3D visualization, you ask iTRACS to determine exactly which servers coming up for lease are operating below it. iTRACS automatically identifies 357 under-performing servers in yellow. Now you know what has to be swapped – but how, and more importantly, with what?
10:05 a.m. You run automated “what if” scenarios to explore possible server swapping strategies and determine the optimization characteristics of certain potential configurations. You look at bladed solutions versus virtualization models. You explore other configuration options. iTRACS software looks into the future to evaluate and recommend your best options. It confirms where and how the 357 servers should be swapped to accomplish multiple goals:
- smooth transition to next-generation servers with new lease
- reduced power consumption and lower energy bills
- better space utilization (smaller footprint) thanks to consolidation – fewer servers required
- higher CPU efficiency – no idle boxes
10:45 a.m. Now that the strategy is confirmed, you need a specific plan of action for implementing it. Using iTRACS, you plan out detailed “what if” Technology Refresh scenarios to map out the best way to conduct the swap. iTRACS tells you exactly what needs to be done. It tells you where to rack and how to configure the power and network so you can swap those energy guzzlers without impacting current service levels. iTRACS then visualizes the future state of the racks with their new servers, without impacting the live model. The future views display exactly how the rows will be configured and connected – and what they will look like – when all of the planned changes have taken effect.
2:05 p.m. You run a few final predictive reports to see how much total power will be saved and the cost implications of the new leased units. iTRACS confirms a 66% energy savings, meaning you’ll get the same CPU cycles using only a third of the energy. And iTRACS has shown you exactly how to achieve it – every device, power, and network connection change that is required. You don’t have to worry because you know it will work.
3:45 p.m. You create a detailed report from the iTRACS screen shots summarizing the swapping strategy and then email it to your boss, who wasn’t expecting anything this good – or this green – this fast. The report includes detailed planning and scheduling for the entire lease exchange. It’s going to reduce power consumption and equipment costs with fewer, more higher-performing servers. All you need now is a thumbs-up and the budget to go get it done. (Did your boss just smile?)
