2011 GEIT Winner Case Briefs

Uptime Institute's Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards recognize projects, ideas, and products that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in IT. The Awards are open to applicants in all countries and are carefully judged by a committee of independent experts. A principal objective of the GEIT Awards is to educate the data center and IT industries in effective ways to reduce energy consumption by highlighting innovation and best practices. These two-page case briefs summarize the projects and products that won GEIT Awards in 2011.

Audacious Idea Harris Corporation and Lee Technologies, a Schneider Electric Company

Multi-Zone Water Containment: A Breakthrough in Site Sustainability

Harris Corporation contracted Lee Technologies (a Schneider Electric company) to take a common-sense approach to data center resource use. Through engineering and ingenuity, Harris was able to irrigate their 4.5-acre data center property year-round without the use of potable water, saving an estimated 2.6 million gallons of water and $80,000 in water utility costs per year.

Beyond the Data Center Tieto

Distributed Heating Using Data Center Waste Heat

IT services company Tieto has built a system to allow waste heat from its data center in Espoo, Finland, to be redirected to local housing. The heat is used for domestic heating and hot water production all year round. The site is a former industrial warehouse, which was refurbished for data center use.

Data Center Design Capgemini and Red Engineering Design

Merlin

Capgemini's $40M Merlin data center opened in 2010. The company says it is the most sustainable facility of the 27 data centers it owns globally. Merlin uses a modular design, free-air cooling and a kinetic UPS to achieve a PUE rating of 1.11 in a facility offering Uptime Institute Tier III Certification of Design Documents performance.

Facilities Innovation Kaiser Permanente

Computer Room Functional Efficiency: a Study in Raised Floor Optimization

Kaiser Permanente had a multi-year goal of improving efficiency in their data centers but wanted to be able to quantify the improvements made. Through a logical process, Kaiser broke its data center cooling into distinct components to optimize cooling efficiency in a holistic manner. The end result was a metric for cooling called Computer Room Functional Efficiency, or CRFE. Because CRFE allows granular, consistent measurement and repeatable results, it provides a tangible means to validate return on investment in the data center.

Innovation in a Smaller Data Center <1,000 sq ft University of Hertfordshire

Reduction and Re-use of Energy in Institutional Data Centers (RARE-IDC)

The UK's University of Hertfordshire refurbished one of its data centers to comply with the European Commission's Code of Conduct. Through consolidation/virtualization efforts, they reduced the number of servers by 65 percent. Then by combining temperature/humidity modification with hot air containment and free-air cooling, they were able to reduce the PUE of the facility from 2.2 to 1.2. The University estimates a return of investment on the project in 10 years based on an annual saving in energy costs of approximately £34,000 (about $54,000) a year.

Innovation in a Smaller Data Center >1,000 sq ft CEMEX

Global Data Center - Smart Energy Management

In 2010, CEMEX executed an energy management program to help align its data center operations with the company's overall sustainability goals. The company aimed to improve energy efficiency in its data center, reduce power consumption, and cut CO2 emissions. The project analyzed processes, technologies, IT, and facilities, resulting in the implementation of 25 separate initiatives.

IT Innovation AOL

You've Got ... AOL Cloud Computing

AOL's changing business model (from an internet service provider to a broader internet media and entertainment provider) required the company to make its computing infrastructure more agile, more efficient, more adaptable to staff and infrastructure constraints, and better able to utilize economies of scale. AOL reviewed the whole of its existing technology infrastructure and decided that implementing a private cloud could help it reach its goals.

Outstanding Facilities Product in a User Deployment Opengate Data Systems and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Intelligent Containment — Beyond Hot and Cold

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) was close to the limits of its data center cooling capacity. Using airflow best practices, it was able to reclaim cooling capacity, grow its IT load, and improve its PUE. To make further improvements, AAFC used intelligent hot air containment technology from Opengate Data Systems.

Outstanding IT Product in a User Deployment Viridity Software and Client (confidential)

Multi-Billion Dollar Business Deploys Viridity DCIM Software – Saves Over $1M

A multi-billion dollar organization (identity confidential) recently sought to control costs in its data center by culling unused or under-utilized servers. After initial manual attempts to identify such servers produced lackluster results, the organization deployed tools from data center infrastructure management (DCIM) supplier Viridity Software. Using Viridity's product, the organization was able to consolidate or retire 813 servers, generating an estimated $1M in savings over three years.

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