Virtual Strategy Magazine - Achieving Data Center Energy Efficiency with Virtualization Technologies

Achieving Data Center Energy Efficiency with Virtualization Technologies

By Rich Lechner
published: Friday, February 29 2008

If enterprise IT had a version of the Oscars, Green IT would be the heavy favorite to win the top prize, judging by the critics' lists. According to the tech industry's top analyst firms, the buzz about Green IT is deafening. Gartner named it the No. 1 strategic technology for 2008. And at IDC, Green IT made two of its top-10 trend lists for 2008. But these types of rankings tell CIOs little about which strategies actually make the most sense for individual organizations, each of which have their own specific needs.

CIOs need to examine Green IT strategies like any other technology strategy: from a cost and planning perspective, weighing expected benefits with potential challenges. Any technology deployed within a Green IT strategy needs to fit with the IT organization's long-term strategic plans.

While discussed widely as an enabler for disaster recovery strategies, one of the less-considered implications of virtualization is the role it can play in a Green IT strategy, and in particular, in enabling energy efficient data centers. The need for more energy efficient data centers is well documented. For example, Gartner reports that data centers account for almost a quarter of global CO2 emissions attributed to information and communications technology (ICT), a figure that is rising rapidly. Far from just a corporate or social responsibility, CIOs should also understand the impact of any technology implementation on the bottom line and business goals.

Because of the many benefits virtualization offers that go beyond data center consolidation, IT organizations are increasingly employing virtualization technologies to help make data centers more energy efficient, increasing flexibility while lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) through reducing operational expenditures.

Impact of Power Consumption from Data Centers

The case for transforming the data center into an energy efficient operation is a compelling one. IBM estimates worldwide consumption of power in data centers hit 170 billion KWH in 2007. Industry experts say by 2010, the cost to power and cool IT equipment could even surpass the cost of the hardware itself, and energy costs may soon represent more than half of the total cost of running a data center.

All these figures point to an inevitable truth: for CIOs, energy efficient data centers represent much more than corporate goodwill - it is an imperative, driven by the potential positive impact on operational costs and the bottom line as well as increased ROI. Energy efficient data centers also address daily, on-the-ground operational issues such as the inability to dissipate heat effectively in the data center and getting sufficient power into the datacenter.

By committing to energy efficiency in the data center, CIOs have the power to reverse the increasing trend towards energy-intensive data center power consumption. For example, the EPA highlighted the potential to save up to $4 billion in annual electricity costs through more energy efficient equipment and operations and the broad implementation of best management practices. For example, IBM has been able to undertake its own data center project as part of Project Big Green, a $1 billion annual investment in Green technology initiatives. In fact, IBM operates the world's largest commercial data center at approximately 8 million square feet and intends to double compute capacity over the next three years, without increasing power consumption or environmental impact. This will result in saving 5 billion KWH of energy usage annually - or CO2 emissions from approximately 1 million cars.

Based on the substantial benefits of Green IT, it's clear that virtualization will increasingly be important to energy efficiency strategies within companies' data centers. Today virtualization is a multi-billion dollar annual market with the potential for continued rapid growth and adoption. By 2010, virtualization will be the single most important technology for IT departments, according to research firm Gartner.

Benefits of End-to-End Virtualization

The rise of virtualization, pioneered more than 40 years ago by IBM for the mainframe, has exceeded expectations because of the many benefits associated with the technology. Virtual servers divide resources of a single server onto smaller, distributed machines that can perform as one larger system, increasing efficiency of processing. As a result, hundreds or even thousands of machines can be consolidated, saving physical space, power consumption and other resources, while utilization and availability of existing resources increase drastically.

In order to fully maximize data center consolidation initiatives, however, CIOs should consider going beyond using virtualization for server consolidation to fully realize the benefits of end-to-end data center virtualization.

For example, virtualization can significantly impact storage resources, which are among the largest consumers of energy in a data center. According to IDC, storage resources are growing at an astounding 50 percent per year. As one of the biggest energy consumers in the data center, storage resources will consume 13.5 times more power than processors - while operating at 25 percent or lower utilization rates. Through virtualization, data centers can see a 30 to 40 point increase in utilization rates of disk, going from 25 percent utilization to 60 percent or more.

Furthermore, applying virtualization technologies and management tools across all system assets, including servers, storage and network devices, can have a substantial impact in allowing companies to tap into unused capacity without adding resources that draw more power. Using virtualization to aggregate resources allows clients to gain higher asset utilization, achieve more rapid deployments, and have the ability to move applications and data for optimal energy consumption. For example, clients can offload a lightly utilized machine or respond to a hot spot in the data center by moving workloads for optimal active energy management. After all, the most energy efficient equipment is no longer in use, whether it's a server, a router or a storage device.

Virtualization Challenges and Solutions

The energy efficiency benefits from virtualization are a strong incentive for enterprises today, but other issues should be considered. First of all, as more virtual servers and storage resources are deployed, the complexity associated with managing these resources increases. The sheer explosion of virtual machines in the dozens or hundreds to the thousands or tens of thousands can greatly complicate data center management in numbers alone.

Additionally, the cost of managing the IT infrastructure has become the largest and fastest growing component of overall IT spending for many organizations. According to industry studies, customers will spend three times more on the management of their systems than acquiring the actual hardware. While virtualization helps offset some of this cost through consolidation of physical resources, a number of other issues related to the management of virtual resources must be addressed. Fortunately, a number of effective tools are available in the market enabling active energy management while leveraging automation technologies to simplify management of virtual machines and speed adoption of virtualization technology.

This centralized management approach helps customers gain a more accurate understanding of the relationships among physical and virtual resources and enables administrators to manage the infrastructure in a more holistic way. The most effective systems management virtualization tools simplify and integrate all data resources - whether physical or virtual - with a single dashboard, significantly reducing the number of tools required for effective management and lowering the cost of administration associated with supporting multiple server types. Leveraging automation capabilities, these tools can relocate virtual servers automatically in order to take advantage of lower utilization rates and help administrator's inventory server and storage devices, monitor the health of these devices, manage maintenance and prevent downtime.

Cost Accounting

Another common problem organizations often face with virtualizing the data center is the difficulty in determining how, when and for what purpose employees are using virtual resources - or how much energy is consumed in usage. An effective data center virtualization program will take organizational usage into account, allocating costs effectively and monitoring usage across both physical and virtual machines to maximize and optimize the infrastructure.

In such instances, IT chargeback methodologies can be employed to full effect. This describes a method by which IT operating or development expenses are charged back to individual business units in order to improve IT accountability and resource alignment with departments or individuals utilizing virtual resources. Like virtualization management tools, there are myriad solutions available today that help the IT organization monitor applications, server and other IT resource use, so that organizations can accurately and appropriately charge with respect to virtualization and consolidation projects. These chargeback processes allow IT not only to tightly map resources to business units, but to understand the energy consumption associated with those system resources.

Others Taking Note

Energy efficiency issues haven't just been the purview of technology companies and IT organizations. Increasingly, governmental, non-profit and other organizations have taken an interest in how businesses can be more energy efficient.

For example, in the U.S., more than 80 local utility and state energy efficiency programs are offering rebates for increasing energy efficiency. One of the first utilities to offer such a program is Pacific Gas and Electric of California, which approved a plan to reimburse part of the costs for server and storage consolidation projects, including software, hardware, and consulting.

In November 2007, the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) and AIT Global held a conference to discuss the positive impact technologies can have on climate change. Major technology companies including IBM participated in that discussion. Based on the previously-cited data center power consumption study requested by Congress, the EPA also has efforts underway to develop new energy efficient specifications for data center equipment and explore new Energy Star benchmarks for data centers.

Energy efficiency is even catching Hollywood's eye. In December 2007, the iHollywood Forum created the first conference to address environmental issues in entertainment and related industries, which include TV, film and music executives, eco-entrepreneurs, and environmental and tech engineers. With its power-intensive computing needs, the media and entertainment industry will be one of the key beneficiaries of Green technology, and as one of the most influential global industries it has the potential to take a leadership role in going Green. Both digital media firms and studios are uniquely poised to benefit from green technology because of the increasing growth rate of compute capacity and data volume, which doubles every year in the industry and outpaces energy consumption growth rates in other industries.

Conclusion

More and more, an energy-efficient data center today is less of an option and more of a necessity. The key to effective virtualization is considering all of the factors - including benefits and possible challenges - and putting a plan into place for efficient data center consolidation and virtualization for increased energy efficiency.

Although virtualization is compelling for data center consolidation initiatives, the benefits of virtualization go well beyond improving energy efficiency. As customers retain more data for compliance reasons, virtualization technologies can help with issues like IT chargeback by department, and increases security and risk management capabilities. In addition, virtualization helps decrease total cost of ownership. Moreover, organizations beyond traditional IT shops and enterprises are starting to notice the potential for Green technologies to impact the bottom line, and the businesses best positioned to take advantage of this opportunity will be well ahead of the curve.