Input: VIRTUALISATION
Virtualisation
can saVe power in
the data centre
There are two options for businesses that want to reduce reduce the number of servers that a company has within its data
their spending on power: outsource their IT to another centre by using virtual machines instead of physical ones. A virtual
provider or implement more efficient systems within their own machine contains an operating system, applications and data
data centre. Whichever choice they make, the most energy within a software wrapper; the virtualisation software makes the
efficient approach to implementing new applications is to use virtual machine think that it is the only machine running on the
virtualisation, argues Reza Malekzadeh of VMware. server, and ensures there are no conflicts between applications.
I
f you ask businesses of any size what one of the fastest growing Using virtualisation within its data centre, the business can run
costs within the organisation is, then power will be one of them. The more than one application on each server. This approach is called
higher rises in fuel costs that have taken place over the last year have server consolidation, because it reduces the overall number
seen electricity prices to the business go up substantially as well. At of machines that are needed. The best measurement for this
the same time, companies are relying on IT in order to be competitive environment is the consolidation ratio, which is the number of
in the market, and employees are requiring more applications than virtual machines that run on each physical server. Typically, using
before in order to be productive. virtualisation means that a business can achieve a consolidation
ratio of between ten and twelve virtual machines to one physical
In this landscape, IT managers have a stark choice. They can carry server.
on taking the same approach to implementing applications, where
they have to put another server into the data centre. However, with This consolidation rate also shows how many physical machines
the price of electricity continuing to rise, it is now estimated that can be removed from the data centre: if a business has a
the cost to power the server and keep it cool is now more than consolidation ratio of ten to one, then one physical machine can
the cost to purchase that server in the first place. The average take the place of nine more boxes that would otherwise have to
server within a business also emits a substantial 12.5 tonnes of be implemented. Alongside this, there is a lot less networking
CO2 every year – in comparison, a family car emits 3.5 tonnes of equipment required to link all of these machines together.
CO2 per year. For businesses that have to control their carbon
emissions to meet corporate social responsibility goals, or just Virtualisation can also be used by hosting companies to support
want to reduce their energy costs, other approaches to IT have to their customers. For some smaller customers, having a partner
be considered. provide an application service rather than buying in software and
hardware can make more financial sense. In this environment,
Virtualisation - what is it, and how can it help? virtualisation can supply more tangible business benefits, rather
than the energy efficiency benefits that would not typically be
There are two main options available for businesses that want to seen. Virtual machines can provide higher levels of availability and
reduce their spending on power: they can either outsource their IT proof against disaster than a physical server.
to another provider, who can host their systems for them, or they
can implement more efficient systems within their own data centre. Virtual storage for virtual servers
Whichever choice they make, the most energy efficient approach
to implementing new applications is to use virtualisation. Another important way that organisations are being more efficient
in their use of technology is through storage virtualisation. Instead
Virtualisation allows organisations to run multiple applications on of having multiple disk drives spread around the organisation’s
a single physical server. Taking this approach, companies can servers, a larger pool of resources is created centrally for all the
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