Energy Efficiency In The Data Center

e, licenses, applications, remote hands, even theAllocate Resources with VMware DRS and DPM
expense of redundancy—none of it compares toVirtualization from VMware provides two additional
the price of power in the data center; and powertechnologies that help you reduce your costs through
needs are increasing exponentially as processingvirtualization.
intensifies and demand for rack space rises.VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) allows
More Power Equals More Heata hosting company and its clients to continuously
Data center power is partly to keep physical serversmonitor utilization and intelligently assign resources as
running, but it’s also to keep them coolneeded. With DRS, resources can be allocated to
enough to run: as servers increase in processinghigher priority applications, according to your rules,
power, so does heat generation. A rack that fiveensuring that your mission critical activities always
years ago produced about five kilowatts of heathave what they need. It also provides dedicated
may today produce as much as 28 kilowatts. To giveinfrastructure for business units, without letting
some idea of how much heat that is: 28 kilowattsresources stand idle.
equals 95,000 BTU or roughly 8 tons of airSupporting DRS, Distributed Power Management
conditioning. A typical house air conditioner is three(DPM) optimizes power consumption by continuously
tons, 10 kilowatts, or 34,000 BTU. That means that itmonitoring power usage and automatically
takes as much power to cool a high density rack asconsolidating workloads and powering down
it would to cool about three single family homes—ifunneeded resources. During lower use periods, DPM
it was high noon in that equatorial neighborhood 24moves virtual server workloads onto the optimum
hours a day.number of physical servers and turns off the others.
Sources of InefficiencyWhen requirements increase, DPM brings physical
Data centers have traditionally been inefficientservers back online—without impact on the virtual
environmentally. Compared to other costs, power hasserver or the customer.
been cheap, and computing precious—if a littleConsolidate Servers with Blades
power was wasted, the result was incredibleBlades help reduce the energy footprint of servers
amounts of information analyzed, communicated andby allowing multiple physical servers to be
stored. The world seemed to have plenty of power,consolidated on one chassis, with one management
and a data center from the 70s or even the 80sinterface per blade, while adding more advanced
would only be a blip on the power grid.management features. The ProLiant BL490c
These days, data centers are much more prevalent:Virtualization Blade solution being adopted by Infinitely
the Data Center Map, a free web service linking dataVirtual will more than triple the number of virtual
center providers and customers, lists 1,297 colocationmachines hosted in the same energy footprint.
data centers in 59 countries. In addition, power hasAccording to HP, the BL 490c blades offer several
become more expensive and less available. However,key performance and management advantages:
data centers still use power like it’s cheap: aeighteen DIMM slots allow more virtual machines to
McKinsey & Company report on data centerbe housed on each blade; integrated dual-port 10 GbE
efficiency, released in 2008, says that on average,server adapter with Flex-10 technology offer the
only six percent of server capacity is being used, andability to fine-tune network bandwidth; conserve
the data center facilities run at no more than aboutpower without performance impact with the built-in
56 percent capacity.HP Power Regulator, and reclaim trapped power in
Three Ways to Cool Down the Data Center—andyour data center by safely limiting server power
Save Moneyconsumption with Dynamic Power Capping.
Virtualization, resource management and physicalThe Future of the Green Data Center
server consolidation are three methods your hostingProjects and organizations are being formed all over
company and you can use to increase data centerthe world to address the problems of power
efficiency.consumption and heat generation. Here are three:
Virtualize ServersResearchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology
One way to conserve power is to get every bit ofare working to reduce the portion of electricity used
computing power out of each piece of hardware.to cool data center equipment by as much as 15
That’s where virtualization comes in.percent. In a simulated data center, Georgia Tech
Virtualization allows you to consolidate your serverscientists are trying to optimize cooling strategies and
requirements onto fewer physical machines, with thedevelop new heat transfer models.
virtual machines consuming only about 1/50th theThe Green Grid is an organization created by many
amount of power. Email servers, web servers andof the big names in computers, power conditioning
applications all act just as if they were running onand data centers, including HP, AMD and Intel.
individual boxes, but for a fraction of the cost, bothTogether, they are developing standards to measure
in capital expense and power consumption.data center efficiency, with the goal of reducing
According to many sources, including The Green Gridpower requirements, waste heat and carbon
and the EPA, virtualization is one of the keyemissions.
ingredients of a more efficient, greener data center.In the future, waste heat like that in a data center
In implementing virtualization, a product such ascould be recycled into energy. Engineers at Oregon
VMware provides some of the highest consolidationState University are taking waste heat and using it to
rates on a secure and reliable platform. With VMware,run a cooling system.
unused physical servers can even be powered off,To Save Money (and Help Save the Planet), Think
and turned back on when needed.Infinitely Virtual
Of course, virtual servers, especially VMware’sContact Infinitely Virtual to find out how virtualization
hardware-based virtualization, also offer increasedand data center efficiency affect your
application access for users, faster installation of newcompany’s bottom line. Let us show you how
servers and better uptime. So not only will yourhosting with Infinitely Virtual can help you reduce
virtual servers help reduce your carbon footprint andyour company’s server costs, while
save you money, they’ll also improve yoursimultaneously making your applications faster, your
company’s competitiveness.data more secure, and your planet a little bit cooler.