I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “When you sweat assets, all you’re gonna get is sweat.” For example, I recently replaced my 10 year old gas boiler. Not because it didn’t work, and not because my house is cold. But because of these 4 requirements:

  1. Need to lower my gas bills – improve efficiency
  2. Concern over failure – reduce risk of failure
  3. Need for instant hot water – more effective solution
  4. Rising monthly support costs – cost avoidance

Have my requirements been met? Absolutely. The boiler comes with 10 years warranty, gas consumption is lower, and we’ve always got hot water. Plus, taking into account lower gas consumption, inclusive warranty and repair bill avoidance, I estimate the new boiler will pay for itself in less than 5 years.

Aged IT infrastructure is no different. If sweating those assets you may want to think again. And take advantage of efficient and effective solutions. Refreshing your storage arrays is a great example of lowering your power bills while delivering improved IT Ops efficiency with improved service delivery back to the business. Let’s look at power consumption. And to put your thoughts into context by seeing how much it costs to make a cup of tea.

Rising power cost are a continual concern. Both domestic and commercial power costs have increased by over 50% and costs aren’t likely to come down anytime soon. My kettle consumes 2840 watts of power. So that’s 2.84 kW. And it boils 0.5 ltr of water in just 1 minute. Power cost is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). So at £0.34 per kWh, If I boil 0.5ltr of water, it costs me £0.02 @ £0.34 per kWh (UK tariff). But if I was to leave my kettle on for 24 hours, it would cost me £23.20.

(2.84 kW x 24 hours) x £0.34 per kWh = £23.20 per 1 day

If I boiled my kettle for year would cost::

£23.2 x 365 days = £8,468 per 1 year (€9,596)

And if I leave my kettle continuously on for 5 years::

£8,468 x 5 years = £42,340 (€47,982)

So here’s a question…… If I over-provision my kettle and fill it to 1.7 ltr. How much more will it cost? The answer is….. 200% more power cost. And 400% more time to boil. Obviously, over-provisioning my kettle is not efficient, and not an effective use of time….And bad for Planet Earth our home. Fortunately, I don’t leave my kettle boiling water 24/7. And I don’t drink too much tea. But IT infrastructure runs 24/7 every day. And is very power hungry. So here’s a tip…..Don’t sweat that asset, modernize and save power costs, improve operational efficiency, and deliver improved services back to the business.

Let’s look at the outcomes in the following example. Here we modernize to Dell Technologies PowerStore 1200T taking advantage of software defined and hardware accelerated 4:1 data reduction. WIth high-bandwidth NVMe SSD disks. As you see the benefits and outcomes are compelling. Not just capacity and performance gains, but also considerable power reduction. Here’s the stats:

  • 91% less power
  • 80% less rack space
  • 96% less latency
  • > 2.2 x more performance

And there’s more….If moving to modern storage that runs on less that 1 kWh, taking only 2 rack units, there’s the opportunity to consolidate data center infrastructure. Moving servers, network switches and more into a single rack will result in less data center racks. Less racks equates to lower data center costs. And reduced IT operational costs.

So what’s the likely cost savings? Well, taking all things into consideration that a modern solution like Dell Technologies PowerStore delivers you’ll be surprised. See example calculation below. Do you still want to sweat those old assets?

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