In today’s environmentally conscious economy, many companies have adopted
numerous “green” initiatives. Whether it’s organizing carpools to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions or recycling bottles, cans and
paper goods, conservation has become a
growing concern for many organizations.
“Information technology holds the keys to
new conservation opportunities that leverage technologies to increase computing
resource efficiencies within the data center,”
according to Kelly M. Chinen, virtualization
practice manager for Agile360.
Smart Business talked with Chinen for
more insight into going green with your IT
infrastructure.
Why should a company be concerned with making its data center more efficient?
As business reliance on computer resources continues to increase, many companies are faced with challenges around where
those systems will reside and how to provide
the required electrical power and cooling to
keep those systems up and running. A more
efficient data center provides increased computing capacity while reducing electrical
power consumption and physical space
requirements.
How is it possible to reduce the number of computing resources if business requirements continue to grow?
Although computing resource requests
continue to increase in most organizations, it
is common to find that existing resources are
heavily underutilized. In fact, many computing resources are running at 5 to 10 percent
of their full capacity. This means that up to 95
percent of the physical computing resources
are sitting idle. Imagine a single person driving to work each day in a 10-passenger van.
It’s pretty obvious that leaving nine empty
seats is not an efficient use of the van’s available capacity, but this is what many organizations are facing today.
Server virtualization is the technology that
allows for greater physical computing
resource efficiency and reduces the amount
of physical computing resources required to
meet ongoing business requirements.
What is server virtualization, and how does it
help to reduce the number of physical computing
resources?
Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems along with their applications to
reside on the same physical computing
resource, which increases both its utilization
and efficiency. Although multiple systems are
running on the same physical computing
resource, each system remains isolated and
does not affect the stability of its neighbors.
Server virtualization provides the means to
reduce the number of physical computing
resources in the data center through server
consolidation, which is the process of migrating existing or new systems onto the same
physical computing resource.
How do I prevent server consolidation from
affecting service level agreements?
Proper planning and preparation is essential for the successful implementation of a
server consolidation effort. In situations
where existing physical resources are to be
migrated into a virtual infrastructure, ‘capacity planning’ tools are available to monitor
utilization levels over a period of time.
Typically, utilization levels are captured over
a period of one month to properly identify
average and peak loads. Following the collection period, the data is analyzed to determine the amount of physical computing
resources necessary to provide the required
service levels.
How does going green reduce server computing
costs?
By reducing the number of physical computing resources in the data center, electrical
power and cooling costs may be significantly
reduced. Reducing the number of existing
physical computing resources also provides
spare data center capacity for future growth,
delaying or eliminating the need for future
data center expansion.
Are there other programs that increase the ROI of
going green with server virtualization?
Some local power companies are offering
rebates to businesses that reduce their power
consumption through the removal of physical computing systems from their data centers. Each power company has a specific process that must be followed in order to obtain
these rebates. It is important to stay on top of
this process to ensure maximum savings.
This sounds great for large companies, but can
small companies have an impact on green initiatives?
Yes, small companies may also see an
impact on green initiatives. Many smaller
companies have been able to reduce server
power and cooling requirements through
server virtualization. One company had a
requirement for 10 new servers. Instead of
purchasing 10 physical servers, it was able to
consolidate those 10 servers onto two host
machines. This not only resulted in an 80 percent reduction of physical servers, but it also
significantly reduced the amount of power,
cooling and rack space required to support
this new initiative. The IT staff was able to
allocate the time that would have been spent
supporting the additional hardware to supporting the business.
KELLY M. CHINEN is the virtualization practice manager at
Agile360. Reach him at [email protected] or (949)
253-4106.
