Efficiency Expert

Jan 2009 , Sponsored by HP

It's fitting that the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality-charged with safeguarding the state's natural resources -is a leader in using green technologies. Using energy-efficient blade servers and virtualization software, the department recently cut data center energy consumption and lowered IT costs, providing an example for Arizona agencies and businesses to follow.

Created in 1986, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) is a Cabinet-level agency responsible for administering all of the state's environmental protection programs. About 700 ADEQ employees support a wide range of programs that ensure the quality of Arizona's air, water and land.

Ron Hardin, CIO of ADEQ, said the agency's environmental efforts aren't only focused externally.

"We really do attempt to practice what we preach," he said. "We are looking to do the very things that we ask our public and our regulated community to do, in buying greener technologies and deploying efficient solutions." Besides data center improvements, ADEQ is investigating power-management solutions to reduce the energy consumed by end-user PCs. And the agency reworked procurement practices to promote the purchase of efficient computing hardware.

Low-hanging fruit
An ADEQ data center evaluation performed about a year ago led to a series of improvements, including upgrades to the facility's cooling system.

"We were able to understand the air flow so we could do the appropriate hot/cold aisles in our data center," said Janine Blake, manager of ADEQ's technical support unit. "Now we don't have a lot of fluctuation in our cooling, and that was huge for us to be able to have a consistent temperature in our data center."

With the cooling system upgraded, ADEQ began deploying powerful blade servers equipped with virtualization software. The combination let the agency deploy an average of almost 10 virtual servers on each physical machine, which cut energy requirements and greatly simplified ADEQ's IT infrastructure.

Blade servers utilizing energy-efficient processors delivered both power and efficiency, Blake said. "When we looked at the type of blades that we wanted to purchase, we needed the very high-end servers with powerful processors, but we still looked for servers that had low-watt processors and low-power RAM."

ADEQ expects these changes to generate dramatic benefits. For instance, Hardin predicts the agency's use of virtualization and highly efficient blade servers will reduce energy consumption by 25 to 30 percent.

Because the agency needs fewer physical servers, it also will avoid a significant amount of hardware and maintenance expenses. "I expect savings of almost 40 percent-and that's being a little conservative, I think," Hardin said. "That's what our portfolio will yield us year after year."

Transformational opportunity
Beyond energy and cost savings, ADEQ's new blade servers provide a flexible foundation for core applications. The agency is moving critical applications to the new infrastructure and evaluating how features like load balancing and hot-swappable parts can strengthen disaster-recovery capabilities.

"We are looking at a data center transformation, and this is just the beginning," Hardin said. "It opens up a whole new world for us in terms of efficiencies and getting the best use out of our investments in infrastructure."

And the transformation doesn't stop with the data center. ADEQ also is exploring other solutions, such as power-management software, to improve the efficiency and manageability of end-user technology.

Although PC users in ADEQ are required to manually shut down their computers at the end of the day, Blake said the agency wants to automate and improve the process. "We are evaluating tools that can be used throughout the business day that do not impact people from doing their work," she said. "If they are not using their computer, we want to be able to shut them down or put them in standby mode."