By Erin Monda, TMCnet Contributor
A recent report by The 451 Group’s (News – Alert) Market Insight Service discussed the value of virtualization in energy-efficient IT services, which was shared at the recent Uptime Institute Symposium in New York City.
The days of one server per application are starting to fade. X86 servers are becoming more and more powerful, thanks to innovations from manufacturers like AMD and Intel (News – Alert). According to the report, virtualized infrastructures are really the only sensible way to exploit the multiple cores and threads of modern processors. There are some intrinsic benefits to virtualization. For example, server acquisition costs can be easily cut in half through virtualization. Running a smaller number of larger, better-utilized servers will be much more energy efficient and require less maintenance. The report stresses that exact savings can be a little difficult to pinpoint because of various factors such as the type of workload being run – applications with higher I/O demands require a lot of local memory that eat up resources. There is some cost in initializing a move to virtualization. Interested parties need to buy new virtualization-ready servers. The extra power these new servers require can be a deterrent, but a consideration must be made for their offsetting levels of efficiency. Intel has been a presence in this movement towards virtualization. The company has been providing customers with a Server Refresh Estimator tool that can calculate potential savings. According to the tool, consolidating 100 single-core, dual-socket Xeon servers down to seven, brand new, multicore Xeon 5600s would result in an annual power savings of $675,000 while still providing a 29 percent performance gain. The total cost of owning these new servers is reduced from $476,000 down to $167,000, according to Intel. Intel and AMD are both adding hardware-based acceleration to support hypervisors from the likes of VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and Red Hat (News – Alert), which has resulted in significant decreasing memory overheads. As far as desktop virtualization goes, significant energy savings are most likely when thin clients are used in place of desktop personal computers. The power savings possible with laptops are more significant. The thin clients use less power than standard desktops or laptops, which is a benefit. With a virtualized infrastructure in place, servers can be managed in ways that cut energy costs. Previously, standby hardware had to be ideally configured against the primary systems. But virtualization workloads eliminate that need as they are independent of the underlying hardware and can be replicated on any virtually-enabled hardware. Despite the benefits it offers, x86 virtualization is still a burgeoning technology with room for improvements. The report cites a current drawback for the servers — they still consume up to 75 percent of their maximum power draw even if they are idle. The report goes on to say that some of the hurdles can be overcome through virtualization, but that issues like power management can prove tricky to properly estimate (as any changes can affect the underlying infrastructure, potentially causing conflicts between the power management features provided by the server manufacturer and those input by the virtualization infrastructure.) The technology is adapting rapidly but there is still room for improvements. Regardless, the report still considers virtualization as one of the most significant of technologies, and one which has the potential for vast energy and resource savings.
Panduit easily had the largest presence on the expo floor at the recent Uptime Institute Symposium with a 1,600 square foot pavilion that displayed the scope of the company’s Unified Physical Infrastructure (UPI) solutions, featuring building management and industrial automation technology in addition to Panduit’s data center offerings.
Erin Monda is a TMCnet Contributing Editor. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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