Green Computer Room Revolution

By leveraging innovations in virtualisation technology an enterprise can decrease cost increase IT flexibility, reliability and availability, thereby freeing a datacentre from the shortcomings of old-style, one-computer server per computing function.

Businesses all over the world are replacing rooms full of old style servers with a handful of high-performance servers running VMware’s ESX software. In fact, one VMware customer recently replaced 60 physical servers with two mirrored high spec servers each running VMware’s ESX server software with 40 virtual machines.

Businesses can create virtualised, dynamic IT environments that are cost and energy-efficient and support the green movement in a significant way. In fact, if you virtualise 50 Servers you could save €141,750 over five years in power and cooling alone.*

Recently, Irish businesses started implementing virtualisation technologies to consolidate their servers, manage their networks and applications more effectively and reduce their carbon footprint. These companies are starting to reap the benefits of such a move including reductions in server capital expenditure, lower server management costs and increased IT agility. Not to mention the tremendous energy cost benefits with computer rooms running low on capacity and high on power and cooling costs. With some server type applications licensed on a per processor basis a virtualised deployment of this type of software can represent significant annual savings. 

Virtualised environments can release valuable resources from the datacentre due to the ease of management of the new environment redeploying to more critical revenue/customer centric tasks. Beside the company bottom line effect, virtualisation is positively impacting the environment. Gartner estimates that 1.2 million workloads run in VMware virtual machines, which represents aggregate power savings of about 8.5 billion kWh - more electricity than is consumed annually in all of the US state of New England (USA) for heating, ventilation and cooling.

Of paramount consideration when venturing into virtualisation is to work with a company with a proven track record. In this regard VMware recognised SureSkills as a gold-level VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC), certifying the company’s Experience and high-level expertise in delivering consulting and solutions based on VMware virtualisation software. “SureSkills are one of our leading

VMware Partners in Ireland, as a VMware Gold VAC and VMware Authorised Training Centre they can offer both Consultancy and Training on VMware and are the only reseller in Ireland with both accreditations,” said Jimmy Kehoe, Partner Manager, VMware Ireland.

*A single 5kW rack (typically housing 12 servers) running continuously could cost €4,300+ a year in electricity* (5 kW x 24 hours x 365 days x €0.10 / kWh). Cooling is estimated at 80% of that wattage. Bringing the total energy cost for that rack to an estimated €7,700. (Based on an average of 400K watt server (2 processor) which uses another 80% of that wattage to drive cooling. Source: Sustainable Energy Ireland, May 2007)