Dell to Ink Green IT Agreement with Oil Company Maxol

Dell has announced that it will implement a new virtual environment for the Ireland-based oil company Maxol as part of its green strategy initiative. The deal between the two companies will focus towards Maxol's data storage, business continuity and consolidation needs.

"Maxol had a lot of old equipment which was going out of warranty and they were having problems with management of the infrastructure, getting service on it. So the solution we gave them, allowed them to consolidate a lot of that old equipment onto this new infrastructure and reduce their hardware footprint in the data centre. It is an important solution because it delivers a relatively low footprint," claimed Paul Kenny, Global Infrastructure Consulting Services Manager for Dell Ireland.

As part of the agreement, Dell will have to take care of the design and implementation of a Microsoft Virtual Server R2 SP1 three-node cluster running on a 3 Poweredge 2950's and a CX300 SAN. The "greener" implementation will result in lower emissions and power consumption levels. Ireland is more and more concerned with implementing green strategies, and the greatest achievement in the field has been scored by Eircom with its energy-efficient datacenter.

"We were looking for a solution to manage this complex infrastructure that would allow us to communicate between all our sites and store increasing amounts of data while taking account of limited physical capacity," said Stephen McCormack, IT Manager with Maxol.

Dell's implementation will remain viable for a long period of time, as the oil company has pre-purchased all future licensing as well as the latest releases. Dell claimed that Maxol will be able to upgrade their current server software to the latest Windows Server 2008 as soon as it is released on the market.

"Maxol has effectively upgraded its systems so that it has optimum performance across the company nine months before it would otherwise. The company can very easily upgrade next year with no disruption when the upgrades become available. The nightly consolidation feature also meets Maxol's green agenda," said Fitzgerald.