Navy endeavors to reduce energy consumption

The Navy and Marine Corps Intranet — a massive network that ties together 700,000 users and disparate Naval facilities from the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., to centers and shipyards in San Diego, Hawaii, and Japan — is providing a lesson on how to cut energy consumption and save capital costs.

According to a report by Information Week the Navy, with assistance from EDS Corp., plans to consolidate the 2,700 physical servers that power NMCI to reduce energy consumption and space requirements, as well as achieve cost savings for the Navy's IT capital budget. So far, 1,200 x86 servers have been consolidated down to 200, each hosting multiple VMware ESX virtual machines.

All in all, the Navy and EDS believe they can drop more than 2,700 servers down to 300, and save $1.6 million a year in electricity costs alone.

To read the full Information Week report, click here.