Dell Helps Accuweather Improve Data Center Efficiency To Better Predict Weather

AccuWeather, Inc., one of the world’s weather authorities, selected Dell to deploy a flexible technology infrastructure that supports the delivery of vital weather information today while enabling them to seamlessly expand their data center environment as needs and new business opportunities arise.

AccuWeather offers accurate, localized, branded forecasts and severe weather bulletins every day to 250 million people worldwide. Available through the web, mobile devices, the airwaves, and in print, AccuWeather data help ensure people and organizations can access vast amounts of weather information through the communications channel of their choice

Meteorologists with AccuWeather predict complex weather patterns by evaluating and analyzing many terabytes of atmospheric and oceanic data every day, including wind and pressure patterns, precipitation, moisture, and cloudiness. Reliable technology is essential to receive, process, manipulate, and display the weather information AccuWeather meteorologists need. With this need in mind, Dell helped AccuWeather architect an IT infrastructure that is flexible and can adapt quickly to immediate demands. The infrastructure, consisting of Dell PowerEdge blade servers and EqualLogic storage arrays, has enabled AccuWeather to deliver the information customers need while preparing for future growth

Prior to deploying their Dell data center environment, AccuWeather faced a number of challenges including how to improve power and cooling effectiveness while using data center space and existing infrastructure more efficiently. To meet these challenges, AccuWeather deployed new Dell M610 blade servers that provide the company with four to six times the performance of their previous products while also saving 50 percent on energy per blade and significantly reducing the space needed for its server infrastructure. Additionally, Dell helped AccuWeather construct a cluster of 150 VMware virtual machines on six Dell PowerEdge R900 rack-mounted servers. Together, AccuWeather’s physical and virtual server infrastructure supports everything from databases and web servers to back-end business systems and testing and development environments

AccuWeather also chose Dell EqualLogic PS6000E, PS5000E, and PS5000XV iSCSI storage arrays to support the organization’s growing data storage and management requirements. Together, the EqualLogic storage area network provides AccuWeather with about 26 terabytes of shared storage and has saved the organization an estimated 80 percent of time spent on storage administration. The installation of Dell EqualLogic storage arrays is a time-saver that has proven tremendously important for AccuWeather. In fact, the company was able to deploy a complete EqualLogic SAN in less than one hour and is today leveraging tiering and backup and recovery capabilities to improve application performance while protecting vital business information.