Virtualization Strategies News, Analysis, White Papers and Case Studies on Virtualization Software and Hardware Strategies

Today’s business executives are concerned not only with the growing costs of energy to run and cool data centers, but also with presenting a green corporate image in today’s era of heightened environmental awareness. The data center has become a major energy consumer on the corporate balance sheet. At the same time, many IT organizations are facing a multidimensional crisis that is the first of its kind in the history of information processing. These companies are experiencing a virtual explosion of information to process and store as energy costs soar to record levels. More energy efficient data centers can help reduce
environmental impact while curbing IT costs.

The amount of energy consumed by data centers is not to be underestimated. Information storage is one of the fastest growing technologies in today’s data center, driven by ever-expanding volumes of business information. Improving data center efficiency by 20% would save 36 billion kwh of electricity; the equivalent of 22 million tons of carbon dioxide—or the amount of CO2 emitted by 4.2 million passenger cars—according to the U.S. Climate Technology Cooperation Gateway.

In terms of energy consumption, IT managers need to look at the costs of both the physical data center and the IT infrastructure. Read More…

Posted under Data Center, Data Center Virtualization, Green IT, Storage Virtualization, Virtualization Strategies, White Paper, virtualization

The rising cost of power combined with the pressure for Green IT strategies make it imperative that IT manager and facilities designer implement strategies for a green data center. Here are seven strategies for a more energy efficient data center from the  system architecture Task Force at the Green Grid.

The task force set out to investigate and provide guidance on existing and emergent cooling technologies that can improve the efficiency of data center cooling architectures. The end result is an excellent white paper that provides insight on seven strategies—identified by the Task Force—that, when properly implemented, can have a significant effect on the cooling portion of your date center which is one of the primary factors in your data center’s power consumption.

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Posted under Data Center, Green IT, White Paper

Research company IDC today released it latest study on Green IT. For the second year in a row IDC has found IT managers’ leading reason for adopting Green IT technologies has to do with reducing energy cost. Even though recent economic issues have reduced oil prices back down to $80 a barrel, energy cost are still a major concern for data center managers.

Other interesting finding from the study are that most IT managers expect to pay more for Green IT products. This makes sense as IT managers will get a better ROI from a high capacity virtualized server, than several lost cost dedicated servers. In the end the IT manager can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs. This is good news for the IT vendor community as well because a high end virtualized blade servers has a higher margins.

Other reason IT manager are looking to “go green” with their IT planning is from pressure from upper management. This may have a lot to do with the fact that “being green” is good for a company’s reputation. More and more customers are looking for green suppliers of their goods and services. There is also a concern that governments will regulate a companies carbon foot print and use of renewable energy.

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Posted under Cloud Computing, Data Center Virtualization, Green IT, Hardware Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization Case Studies, Virtualization News, Virtualization Software, Virtualization Strategies

Gartner Analyst concludes that virtualization is the most strategic technology trend for IT and business. Each year Gartner analyst examines the latest industry trends during their symposium and highlights the 10 most impactful technologies.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

In forecasting the impact of the economy on IT spending, Gartner put virtualization near the top of must-have technologies. To date much of the focus has been on server virtualization, but virtualization also has many benefits in other areas such storage. Gartner analyst Carl Claunch said that in storage, for instance, virtualization allows users to “to combine different kinds and generations of storage technology.” That gives them the freedom to mix and match storage technologies based on competitive bids.

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Posted under Cloud Computing, Green IT, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Strategies

Migrating systems to a virtualized environment can deliver significant efficiency gains and cost savings, but it has to be planned carefully. Martin Courtney explains how IT leaders can improve the odds of success

Server virtualization, which allows multiple virtual machines to run separately on a single physical computer system, has become a priority for many IT departments, thanks to the multitude of benefits it delivers. But IT manager considering deploying the technology need to be aware of how different priorities can affect their implementation plans.

A key question to ask is what are the primary goals of your virtualization project? Consolidation is the most common driver for adopting server virtualization. Other goals reduced hardware maintenance costs, or more in the “Green IT” area such as reduced energy consumption or a company’s carbon footprint. Read More…

Posted under Green IT, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization, Virtualization Strategies

Over the past year, virtualization has moved to a mainstream technology that is being embraced by most enterprises. The evolution is due to the potential cost savings and increased flexibility that server virtualization can provide.From a cost-savings perspective, virtualization has the potential to reduce IT spending and improve server utilization which reduces power and cooling cost. Yet what is most exciting to IT managers is the increased flexibility virtualization can enable. IT team can deploy virtual servers faster than dedicated servers which increased their ability to react to ever changing business needs.

The challenge has been that IT applications are continuously expanding. Past solutions often involved a single application on each x86 server to avoid crashes or performance problems. Given tight IT budgets, very low utilization, and the high costs associated with low server utilization, virtualization has emerged as a way of controlling costs through consolidation while increasing the flexibility of IT. Read More…

Posted under Green IT, Server Virtualization, Virtualization Strategies