Virtualization Puts the Green Into IT Initiatives and Back Into Your Pockets

By Grace Krokidas
published: Friday, April 03 2009

For many companies looking to implement green IT initiatives, virtualization for server consolidation presents a very appealing value proposition.  However, this view is a bit short-sighted and does not take into consideration all the savings and conservation aspects that virtualization can bring to the table.    Undoubtedly, server consolidation should be considered a cornerstone of any green IT initiative. Companies commonly attain consolidation ratios of 20:1 by virtualizing servers, and therefore can reduce power use by similar levels.  And that's a very good start to making IT operations greener. But virtualization technology also provides opportunities for companies to make their server operations much more efficient all the way around and gain additional benefits to conserve resources, save energy and make fewer systems do so much more.

Here are three potentially overlooked ways companies can use virtualization to enhance their green IT efforts:

1.        Tighten up the virtual machines. While 20:1 server consolidation ratios are common, some organizations reach 40:1 or even higher. When you consider the low end, a 20:1 consolidation ratio means that now one server does the work previously done by 20. The organization no longer has to power, cool and maintain 19 servers, which represents a 95 percent reduction.    You can potentially hit the high end of consolidation by making virtual machines as compact as possible, which lets more of them share a single virtual host.   New solutions can automatically shrink the size of virtual machines, using techniques such as de-duplication, compression, realignment and defragmentation.  Imagine the power of being able to resize specific virtual machine and reclaim storage based on what it needs to do now - not based on specs from when it was built.   With reductions of VMs ranging from 30 to as high as 80 percent of their original size, anyone can see the potential impact for conserving storage resources.    The ability to resize VMs not only enables more VMs to share a single host, but also reduces the IT assets and energy required to backup, store and transfer virtual images.   When you consider that IT equipment accounts for approximately nine percent of all energy consumed by businesses, and data centers use up to 1,000 times more power than equivalent office space, the potential savings here is something that every organization needs to reckon with. Servers alone account for 0.6 percent of all power consumed in the U.S. (1.2 percent if power for cooling systems is included), according to a 2007 study by Stanford University researchers.

2.        Go beyond the server.  Desktop virtualization has become a reality today.  For all the talk about desktop virtualization, this market has hardly been penetrated.  There are literally billions of PCs that can be virtualized. Virtualized desktops and thin clients may consume as little as 5 watts of power, which represents a huge potential power savings compared to traditional PCs.  Now the consolidation and power reduction benefits that organizations have experienced for servers can be applied to desktops.  By some accounts, the typical company runs 20 desktops for every server, and most desktop users tap only about 2 percent of its resources in a given session.   On the other hand, virtualized desktops can provide very rich returns by ensuring that the exact right amount of resources are devoted to the tasks that need to be done.  Another significant benefit is that virtualized desktops can leverage many of the backend processes used by virtualized servers, where companies can deploy virtual solutions to take on more of the maintenance for the entire IT environment.  For example, a virtualization backup solution can handle this function for both desktops and servers.   The trick is to find the right solution that lets admins recover the objects they need to recover, whether it's a single file or an entire image of a virtual machine.

3.        Manage the environment. Virtualization is not a "set-it-and-forget-it" technology. The virtual environment must be intelligently monitored and managed to maintain optimal workloads.  The truth is, today many organizations do not feel comfortable that they have sufficient information on how their systems are performing - physical or virtual. Many companies will find that virtualization, often for the first time, lets them really "see" what is going on in their environments.  Virtualization sets the stage for cost-effective monitoring of IT systems in order to spot issues such as resource contention or bottlenecks and other problems to help keep systems healthy.  However, an added green benefit is the ability to optimally deploy resources based on solid information and make adjustments to ensure that systems perform as efficiently as possible without either too much or too few resources allocated to them.   

These strategies are available to almost any organization of any size or budget, and they are amazingly straightforward to understand and deploy, if the organization does its homework and makes a point of working with virtualization veterans who have the expertise and can offer best practices in this field.  A key first step is to find vendors who understand and offer quality virtualization solutions and services.  A robust and affordable P2V solution to support quick and reliable migrations from physical to virtual environments is the clearest path to start with for this kind of initiative.  In addition, it is vital to find providers who go beyond a single aspect to offer proven solutions across multiple administrative areas.  Look for vendors, too, who have solid partnerships with platform providers who not only support significant peace of mind, but also shorten the adoption/training cycles and gets users productive more quickly.

In summation, every organization that runs its business on IT should be carefully considering virtualization as a means to saving resources and money while optimizing your systems. The consolidation aspect alone provides a very impressive and fast ROI just from a financial perspective, but when you also factor in the environmental effects, the picture is even more impressive.

Virtual machines are more resource-friendly than their physical counterparts, but the great news is that virtualization solutions exist today that allow you to make your IT systems as efficient and cost effective as possible.   Server consolidation is a great first step, and P2V/V2Vtools exist that provide smooth transitions from physical to virtual.  Optimization tools allow you to reap the best results by letting you run more VMs on a fewer servers and plan adequately for storage.  New sophisticated monitoring solutions provide clear views into all the layers of the virtual environments.   As systems grow and change, administrators can stay on top of these changes to workloads and manage them accordingly to prevent potential issues.  Solutions for backup and recovery can extend to more aspects of the IT environment, including both the physical servers and virtualized desktops.

If you are serious about going green, get serious about going virtual.  This approach to virtualization will only spawn more opportunities to optimize IT.  The upshot? Your green initiative is going to keep getting greener and put more "green" back into your pockets.

Green IT , Green Strategy Awards , Vizioncore