Earth Day is a great time to think about all the ways we can help protect our environment. Whether it’s recycling at home and in the office, or getting involved in environmental issues in our communities, we can all play a role in improving our planet.
At Dell, Earth Day is also the perfect opportunity to celebrate our customers who are working to advance green initiatives by using our technologies.
Saving space, powering down on energy costs
Every day, we are inspired by how our customers are using our technologies to be greener within their own companies – significantly reducing their data center footprints to cut energy use, as well aspower and cooling costs.
When the fast-growing Pflugerville, Texas Independent School District (PFISD) needed to add new scalable technologies to support more growth, it wanted to make sure it remained true to its focus on green technologies. The district replaced traditional servers with a space-saving Dell PowerEdge FX converged architecture. With this solution, PFISD went from 10U worth of servers down to 4U. Additionally, the district deployed a Dell Storage array, which helped it reduce its storage footprint from 40U to 10U. Now, instead of three AC units running around the clock in the data center, PFISD only needs to run one of the units, thanks to the energy efficiency of the Dell SC4020 array and FX2 architecture. And the cost savings are huge – thanks to the reduction in data center space, the district will save $37,000 in annual power and cooling costs.
SURFsara is a Netherlands-based high-performance computing (HPC) center that is committed to minimizing its day-to-day energy consumption. The center worked with us to upgrade its compute cluster, which is based on 624 Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell Networking, and a Dell direct-attached storage array. Using the new cluster, SURFsara has reduced its energy use by 40 percent – cutting the power consumption of its cluster from 250 kilowatts to 150 kilowatts. The organization now complies with the government’s Green Deal, which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. SURFsara is also seeing a 50 percent increase in computing power, which will help it deliver faster insights for scientific researchers in the Netherlands.
Improving communities with innovative green solutions
Many of our customers are also creating innovative new green solutions that have an environmental impact beyond their own companies.
SHAWCO, for example, is a nonprofit that supports developing communities in South Africa. The company engaged with Dell to implement a solar-powered Learning Labs program to support computing classes. The portable labs feature solar panels, which run on a Dell PowerEdge server and use a Dell Networking switch and a number of Dell Wyse zero clients. SHAWCO is using the energy-efficient solution to ensure internet access in areas where energy supplies often fail. But it’s not just about energy savings – the organization is also helping hundreds of people who don’t normally have access to the Internet learn important computing skills. In just 12 months, SHAWCO helped 420 people of all ages gain vital access to computers.
There’s also Fujian University of Technology. More than 150 million people own cars in China. To accommodate all the vehicles they drive, the Fujian University of Technology supports the Fujian province’s Smart City Transportation strategy. Specifically, the university created a cloud infrastructure to support a big data platform to give a real-time picture of road usage in Fujian. The energy-efficient platform is based on Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell Storage and Dell Networking switches. Now, the government can use real-time road data to improve transportation policy and can help residents travel more efficiently by using big data analysis to help reduce congestion.
We want to thank these customers, and many others, for all the work they’re doing to make our planet a better place to live.
For more information, visit Dell.com/environment.