Green IT
How Server Virtualization Can Save Power,
Resources and the Planet
Feb 12, 2010
By
Tracyann Mains
The results are in from last year's sustainability efforts within the Information Technology department. While not generating revenue, somehow IT has managed to significantly reduce costs.
In nearly all companies, IT falls into the category of "cost center" and not "revenue generator." IT resources consume energy, materials, manpower and large portions of budgets. For those reasons and more, IT departments are becoming critical in the adoption of sustainability practices, which can reduce operating costs and allow for those funds to be reallocated to strategic investments that benefit the company's bottom line…and the environment.
When you talk about "Green IT," the two big elephants in the (server) room are energy consumption and waste. The next logical step is to take a look at both of these opportunities for sustainable strategies.
The Power of Saving Power
Most companies utilize a datacenter – a facility used to house computer systems such as telecommunications and data storage - in one capacity or another. One of the highest costs for a datacenter is energy consumption. Whether your business is a datacenter or uses the services of a datacenter, you can reduce your power expenditure and costs while simultaneously becoming good consumers and stewards of the planet.
“I wouldn’t even think about sustainability or green if it didn’t have a bottom-line impact to our business.”
Chris Drake
Founder/CEO
FireHost
Energy consumption not only uses valuable resources but also translates to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In fact, "IT is responsible for 2 percent of the world's total emission of CO2. At the same time, IT contains the key to reducing the remaining 98 percent of CO2 emissions," according a report published by The National IT and Telecom Agency, based in Denmark. To paint a picture, another industry responsible for 2 percent of global CO2 emissions is aviation, according to a 2007 Gartner press release.
FireHost, a privately held secure Web hosting company based in Plano, Texas and Scottsdale, Ariz., recognizes their role in reducing power usage.
"One of our server rooms could power a whole neighborhood," FireHost founder and CEO Chris Drake says. "So, as a hosting provider, we have a lot of power responsibility not only from the planet's perspective but from our own social responsibility as well as financial responsibility."
To be both a responsible supplier and consumer, his company has embraced "virtualization," where companies securely share a server rather than each holding onto a server of their own. Virtualization is important because it maximizes server usage and productivity while lowering energy consumption. Because of this adoption, FireHost has significantly reduced their power costs in the last three years.
"Going virtual has cut our power spending in half," Drake says. "Without it, we'd be spending $60,000 per month. More importantly, we'd be consuming $60,000 in power that we don't need to consume."
These savings trickle down to the consumer and to the planet.
Dedicated to Less Waste … Not to More Servers
In addition to power consumption, another IT sustainability elephant is the waste generated by both the production and disposal of IT hardware. Hardware requires resources (material and energy) to produce it, facilities and labor to create it, and when abandoned, a way to dispose of it.
And disposing of this type of electronic waste (e-waste) is not a simple process due to such components as batteries and metals. For instance, servers should not be thrown away as they have pounds of heavy metals—including lead, mercury, cadmium and even arsenic—that can seep into the ground. This can make a server a wasteful and environmentally harmful product when ending up in dumpsters rather than being recycled and sent to secondary markets.
One way to reduce IT waste is to migrate from the use of dedicated servers to virtual servers.
A dedicated server is the sole property of one company. The resources taken to build it—along with its capacity, energy usage and hardware—are not shared in any way with anyone else. As a result, these types of servers can equate to overspending, overpowering and waste. Virtualization, on the other hand, can be as powerful and secure as a dedicated server—and reduces energy consumption along with waste. In fact, FireHost averages 30 virtual servers per server - a 30:1 ratio.
When customers say they need a dedicated server, Drake counters with "You need a dedicated server? I'm going to tell you that you don't."
Drake explains that, in the past four years, the technology around virtualization has matured, eliminating the need for dedicated servers. Such software providers as Microsoft, Citrix and VMWare came out with the virtualization foundation needed for others to provide solutions like Web site hosting, backup, monitoring, management and billing.
"Now, there's a nice suite of support products that have made the virtualization solution viable," Drake says.
In fact, International Data Corporation (IDC), global provider of market intelligence for Internet technologies, has found a steady increase of the use of virtualization software, with more than 60 percent of server shipments in 2009 including virtualization capabilities. "This is due to the maturation of virtualization deployments and the need for greater control with higher quality, fine grained management tools as IT departments continue to strive towards internal cloud computing environments," states Brett Waldman, research analyst for System Software at IDC, in a 2009 press release.
And Michelle Bailey, research vice president of Datacenter Trends at IDC, sees the switch changing how customers manage their datacenters.
"'Virtualization first' is now the default approach for new server deployments at most enterprise IT organizations and is quickly becoming the foundational platform for cloud computing initiatives among service providers," she states in the release.
Virtual is Reality
Migrating to virtual servers can reduce your monthly datacenter expenditure without sacrificing quality or service. A move from dedicated server usage also can have impact on the environment from production to disposal by eliminating unnecessary waste, energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Reduced operations costs and being a good consumer – a double bang for your buck that will make your next budget meeting easier!
Start the conversation...™
Can your company make the jump to virtual servers? Create a list of what your needs are. Then decide if virtualization fits those needs.