Conserve Power With Data Center Virtualization

By Author: Martin Lobo
Total Articles: 355
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Recently, a research conducted by Microsoft, it has been revealed that the daily power consumption of a typical data center is equivalent to the monthly power consumption of thousand homes, with a total of 61 billion kilowatt hours going toward datacenter energy consumption. If this pace is maintained then in the forthcoming three years we will require additional 10-15 power plants to keep up to the requirements.

Therefore, data center managers have two essential guidelines to follow, namely operational efficiency and application accessibility. Generally, these two often remain at odds with each other. For attaining operational efficiency a data center manager requires to introduce new technologies. However, when it comes to the deployment of new technologies there are certain application accessibility challenges. In addition to this, there remains the old school adage “if it is not broken, then do not fix it” that further leads to challenges in the adoption of new technology trends. One of the time tested ways of managing data center expenses and offering application accessibility is datacenter virtualization ...
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The concept of data center virtualization is a simple one – converting physical instances to virtual ones, hosting multiple virtual instances on lesser physical machines, and minimize power consumption. Gartner in 2008 predicted that approximately 4 million virtual machines are expected by 2009 and 611 million virtualized personal computers are expected by 2011 with the IT architecture and operations deeply influenced by virtualization in 2012. However, globally architects are working towards finding out the appropriate application for virtualization and how can virtualization assist in power conservation?

According to computing language, data center virtualization is a broad term that indicates the abstraction of computer resources. The term was widely used back in the 1960’s. The process of virtualization allows one computer carry on the job of numerous computers, by resource sharing from a single computer across multiple platforms. The various forms of virtualization are:-

Platform Virtualization – This is the separation of an OS from the underlying platform resources
Resource Virtualization- This entails virtualization of certain system resources, for instance name spaces, network resources and storage volumes
Application Virtualization – This consists of hosting of individual applications on a separate software/hardware
Desktop Virtualization - This refers to the remote manipulation of a computer desktop

Today, eminent companies specializing in information security and systems integration has come up with innovative datacenter server virtualization lifecycle services. These services can help you attain benefits such as:-

CAPEX Savings from
Partition
Consolidation
OPEX Savings from
Virtualized production servers
High availability
Enhanced disaster recovery capability
Strategic Business Benefits like agility & flexible through:
Automated IT processes
Available resource pools
Capacity on-demand
Data Center Operational Support

Data center virtualization is frequently implemented to assist business scenarios such as data center consolidation, disaster recovery, test and development and security. Virtualization is much more than a mere consolidation of physical services and reducing data center expenses. The technology has other useful impacts that range from optimal resource utilization to substantial savings in power, energy and management expenses.

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