A new Lab Report posted yesterday on emc.com details the continuing transformation of EMC’s IT infrastructure. The report, titled EMC IT, A Blueprint for Data Center Efficiency, was authored by Brian Garrett and Mark Peters of the Enterprise Storage Group.
No surprise, EMC needs to contend with all the same IT issues encountered by our customers:
- Explosive growth – applications, servers, storage & global operations challenges
- Space, power and cooling at their limits
- Expensive data center upgrades
- Increased efficiency requirements and cost containment
This report outlines EMC’s approach to obstacles, choices and desired outcomes as well as plans for what comes next. It also shows that we are “drinking our own champagne”, seeking consulting advice and laying the technical groundwork for the coming virtual world.
EMC IT Savings
There is no big bang here. Just as many of our customers would pursue it, this was a steady, thoughtful, flexible, sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliant series of steps toward greater efficiency today and better positioning for the future.
The report covers a period from 2004 to 2008 with three key and continuing initiatives:
- Storage Efficiency
- Storage tiers expanded from 2 to 5
- Software for more and better automation
- Power, cooling and space improvements
- Virtualization / consolidation
Over the period covered, EMC achieved some remarkable results. A data center expansion was delayed by about five years. About $10 million dollars was saved in energy expense (and 60million pounds less of CO2) and cost avoidance for equipment is estimated at about $74 million dollars.
This was not a small effort but the demonstrated results were well worth it. And beyond the progress already achieved the stage is set for the next phase of virtualization, for EMC’s private cloud and for a leadership demonstration of how-to that our customers can look at to help guiding their own next steps.
Lots more detail of what was done and what it means in the report ….
Comments