news
GREEN IT – What is it?
“It's not whether or not we'll save money – it's a matter of when.”
In 2000 a typical server only consumed 100W of power, today the average server consumes at least four times as much. Combined with rising energy costs and increased server density, the growth of data center energy spending could far outpace the rate at which IT budgets grow, leaving less budget for other vital IT initiatives and projects.
Don’t just take our word for it?
- The Gartner Group states that energy costs may increase from 10% of the IT budget today to over 50% in the next few years
- Forrester says servers would use about 30% of their peak electricity consumption while sitting idle
- IDC says the cost to power servers will exceed the cost of the servers by next year
- The U.S. Department of Energy states that data center energy usage can be 100 times higher than those for a typical commercial building
- IDC calculates that the total power and cooling bill for servers in the US stands at a whopping $14 billion a year, and if the current trends persist, the bill is going to rise to $50 billion by the end of the decade
So what can be done?
There are a number of solutions available today that can help create a greener IT environment whilst providing genuine cost savings. These include:
- Virtualisation
- Virtualised Environments
- Storage Virtualisation
- Application Virtualisation
Virtualisation
Virtualization makes it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware.
In essence, virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. Software such as VMware’s ESX Server enables you to transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an x86-based computer-including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller-to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer.
Strategic Solutions for Virtualised Environments:
Successful data center initiatives such as server consolidation and disaster recovery require considerable upfront planning and analysis. Platespin provide a powerful and sophisticated analysis and planning solution that takes the guesswork out of complex server consolidation, disaster recovery, capacity planning, asset management and green data center initiatives.
Platespin PowerRecon remotely gathers workload utilisation statistics providing a clear and concise picture of the application services running in a data center and highlights how their resources are being used.
PowerRecon supports the green data center by allowing organisations to assess the potential cost savings in power, cooling and space that can be achieved through consolidation.
Vizioncore provides software that enables virtualization by enhancing the VMware ESX Server capabilities. The vizioncore products provide backup, replication and monitoring of VMware ESX Servers facilitating a powerful Disaster Recovery solution, a cost-effective and reliable High Availability option and automated Monitoring and Performance Management of the ESX Server farm.
VMware is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world’s largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT and fully leverage their existing computing investments.
VMWare has been adopted by more than 10,000 organisatons worldwide over the last four years. Their software is the industry-leading virtual infrastructure platform for x86-based systems used for partitioning hardware and consolidation application workloads in mission-critical environments.
Xensoure (recently acquired by Citrix) offers organisations the combination application, desktop and server virtualization. Citrix XenDesktop delivers virtual Windows desktops. It reduces the risk of data loss and the management complexities and inflexibility of distributed PC’s.
Citrix XenServer enables businesses to deploy high-performance Windows and Linux virtual machines rapidly and easily, and to manage them and their related storage and networking resources from a single easy-to-use management console.
Storage Virtualisation:
3PAR offers the most efficient and massively scalable storage array for open-systems, online storage environments. 3PAR's breakthrough hardware and software innovations allow you to overcome the cost, complexities and functional limitations of traditional storage solutions.
Whether you have deployed a Fibre Channel or IP-based storage network, 3PAR Utility Storage is ideal for storage consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management and performance-intensive applications.
DataCore Sofware is a leading storage virtualisation and SAN management software supplier that has deployed thousands of virtual SANs around the world.
DataCore software makes storage and SAN infrastructures fault tolerant, flexible and virtual. As the virtual storage layer, it completes a Total Enterprise Virtualisation strategy; cost effectively optimising disk space utilisation, accelerating I/O performance, eliminating downtime and allowing for complete hardware independence.
Application Virtualisation
Virtuozzo by Swsoft creates isolated virtual environments (VE) or containers on a single physical server and OS instance. Virtuozzo’s OS virtualization solution has higher efficiency and manageability, making it a good solution for organizations concerned with containing the IT infrastructure and maximizing resource utilization.
Virtuozzo’s complete set of management tools and unique architecture makes it the perfect solution for easily maintaining, monitoring and managing virtualized server resources for consolidation and business continuity configurations.
PolyServe software consolidates servers and storage into manageable, scalable NAS and available database and high performance file serving utilities.
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization virtualization solution delivers applications that are never installed and dynamically delivered, on demand. Whether deployed on desktops, laptops or, terminal servers, SoftGrid changes application management from a series of manual tasks into an automated, streamlined process that accelerates the pace and reduces the cost of business.
Thinstall is an Application Virtualisation Platform that enables complex software to be delivered as self-contained EXE files which can run instantly with zero installation from any data source. The core of Thinstall VS is the Virtual Operating System, a small light-weight component which is embedded with each “Thinstalled” application.
Citrix is the de facto standard for delivering Windows applications at the lowest cost. It offers both application virtualisation and application streaming delivery methods to enable the best access experience for any user, with any device, working over any network. By centralising applications and data in secure data centres, IT can reduce costs of management and support, increase data security, and facilitate business continuity.
Via Presentation Server allows IT to deliver applications as a service—providing on-demand access to users, while affording IT the flexibility to leverage future application architectures.
Macrovision's solutions allow customers to easily price, package and protect their software. More than 3000 software publishers and hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies use Macrovision technologies to better manage their software licenses.
Useful Links
A website that takes a commercially-minded view on Green issues
www.businessgreen.com
Crunching the numbers on data-centre efficiency
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39290927,00.htm
Cutting Emissions and Energy Use Enterprise wide – Green IT
http://energypriorities.com/entries/2007/06/what_is_green_it_data_centers.php
Greener Computing - information resource on how to align environmental responsibility with business success
www.greenbiz.com
Top 10 Tips for a Greener Data Center
> Learn More
For further information please call +44 (0)870 8505599
or email info@shiftf7.com
