Hi! I like this article from CIO.com that talks about how the IT Manager for the State of Vermont saved money and improved security by moving to a “lights out” data center.
The data center for the state of Vermont provides application and storage for the services provided by the state’s government, from processing registration information for the Department of Motor Vechiles to ensuring that enrolled citizens benefit from the state’s food subsidy program.
Joe the information technology manager responsible for the data center embarked on a program 2 years ago to automate management of the facility, moving from operation around the clock to locking the doors and turning off the lights between midnight and 6am on weekdays for the entire weekend.
After 6 months of this practice Joe was able to cut staff by more then 40% and significantly reduce costs.
Automating data center operations and allowing for remote management – the core characteristics of a lights out facility are a natural fit for companies that want to save money and increase security. H-P loves lights out with their lights out manager function and it is very popular. Here are some lessons that Joe learned…
1. “Lights out” is not all or nothing
While some companies may aim to depopulate their data center around the clock, for most companies being lights out is not a black-and-white concept. The definition of lights out is not zero population all the time, says Joe.
“The concept extends from totally nobody there to lights out for a certain period of time,” Ng says. “For the State of Vermont, we cannot go lights out 24-by-7.”
Increasingly, data centers are being designed assuming that fewer, or no, people will work in them, says Joseph Pucciarelli, program director of technology, financial, and executive strategies for business intelligence firm IDC.
“You used to have a data center with a lot of office space around it filled with IT people,” he says. “Now, you don’t see a lot of office space because they don’t want to have a lot of people in the data center.”
2. Make sure you have support
Working as part of the state government means listening to a lot of constituents. Joe had to get support from not only his supervisors, but also the labor unions that represent the state’s workers.
The result: while his business groups saved money by reducing the number of workers in the data center from 17 to 10, those people were not fired, but moved to other positions.
“Nobody lost their job,” he says. “They got shifted to a new department or agency.”
3. Fewer people does not mean less oversight
While some people might think that having no one physically in the data center would mean a loss of oversight, just the opposite is true, says Joe.
Moving to extended periods with no one allowed in the data center gives IT departments a better handle on what is happening. With various systems in place to notify the data-center group of any incidents and better monitor operations, IT workers have more information, not less.
“By going through the exercise, we have a much better awareness of the system,” Joe says. “When things go bump in the night, we have e-mail notifications. We are much more in tune with the system now.”
4. Fewer people means more security
In addition, a lights-out data center removes the biggest source of errors and threat to the facility: people. While workers are need to maintain servers, removing humans from the equation helps security greatly, says HP’s Thome.
“The most unreliable component in the data center is the people,” Thome says. “Pull the wrong cable and, oops, something goes down that was not supposed to go down.”
The State of Vermont’s IT chief agrees.
“We are much more secure because people are not walking in and out during the night,” Joe says. “The more people that walk into a data center, the more security is a problem.”
5. It doesn’t have to be expensive
The state of Vermont wanted to save money, so a plan that cost a lot to implement would not have worked. Rather than buy a state-of-the-art management system, Joe used the software provided by the manufacturers of the data center’s cooling systems and uninterruptible power supplies.
“We put it together using different systems,” he says. “In the end, we did not spend a lot of money upgrading things. We used what we had at our disposal.”
In the end, what initially was a hard sell has become second nature.
“In about six months, people won’t even remember we were ever 24-7,” Joe says.
Go Joe! Using such tools as H-P Lights Out & APC’s integrated software tools you might have most of the software and tools necessary to save money and have a more of a lights out approach! There are other ways to save money in your data center besides Joe’s fantastic Lights Out Methods. Another way is if you are in the state of CT, Delaware, IL, Maine, Maryland, Massachutes, New Hampshire, NJ, NY, Rhode Island, Texas or Washington DC you can reduce your overall energy bill by purchasing your energy through RedLegg’s group discount. You still have the same provider (ComEd etc) that is supplying the energy, but the difference is that RedLegg purchases power @ a group discount rate because of all of the other large organizations that are apart of our group. Ask us about it & we will give you the skinny ASAP! http://www.redlegg.com/files/redleg-energy-services.php
