ICM argues that server virtualisation could be one of the keys to cutting down power usage in the datacentre

Indeed, earlier this year, the much talked about EC directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) came into effect, which aims to minimise the impact of electrical and electronic goods on the environment, by increasing re-use and recycling in order to reduce the amount of equipment going to landfill.

The current environmental focus is, and is likely to remain, on organisations and consumers to lower their ‘carbon footprint’, i.e. the measure of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels. In the case of an individual or household, as part of their daily lives; in the case of an organisation, business or enterprise, as part of their everyday operations.

The overall amount of energy being consumed by and demanded of data centres is growing. The vast increase in the number, density and power of servers has led to an increase in power consumption of around 15% per year. In addition, organisations need to budget around 125% more for the equipment required to cool their growing data centres. The environmental impact of the increased amounts of carbon this produces is vast, however, add to this figures from the Office for National Statistics, which state that UK electricity prices rose by 10.7% last year and are expected to rise by around 10% each year over the next five years, and the reasons for ‘going green’ in the data centre may become even more compelling.

Being green for green’s sake doesn’t seem to be the best way for providers of green technology to make an impact. Reducing carbon emissions may be good for the environment, for Corporate Social Responsibility and for PR, however it isn’t enough for green technology to be fully embraced. As in other industries and markets, it needs to provide additional value or cost savings for customers. 

For data centre owners and IT professionals, the question is one of being proactive and being seen to be proactive in order to decrease their carbon footprint without compromising the availability of their systems.  The issue comes down to using less power, though with existing technologies there are limited ways to do this without compromising service levels.

In the data centre, there is a growing business problem that parallels so called ‘cyber warming’. With the increasing trend towards server sprawl alongside the growth in both blade technologies and distributed architecture, all necessitating large amounts of power, the demand for energy is increasing exponentially alongside the associated costs.

According to IT Weekly (April 2007), server consolidation, and specifically virtualisation, is one of the most effective ways to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a company’s data centre.  Naturally using fewer servers means less power consumption and cooling requirements, which results in less carbon being emitted.   However IT professionals will want to be sure that they can get the same performance from a consolidated infrastructure.  
Erick Mackay, group marketing director at ICM says: “Increasingly, customers are asking us for virtualised server solutions to make better use of their IT and human resources.  Virtualisation balances capacity requirements across the entire server estate and means that new servers can be provisioned in a fraction of the time it takes in a traditional environment.  It gives our customers’ IT teams the ability to respond faster to the needs of their business”.
Erick adds: “The growing prominence of green technology to combat cyber warming in the IT press, and now in the mainstream press, has split the focus on virtualisation as a method, not just of consolidation that is beneficial to the business, but also as a green technology that may be beneficial to the environment.”

Virtualisation as a method of consolidation

Virtualisation technology such as VMware has become synonomous with the term ‘server consolidation’ and breaks the ‘one server, one application’ rule.