The implication of running separate physical servers for each of your major Windows and Linux based applications and a disparate storage infrastructure not only poses a problem with physical space requirements, but also impacts on the energy demands and costs to your business.
To put this in context:
- Gartner Group says that energy costs may increase from 10% of the IT budget today to over 50% in the next few years.
- Servers use about 30% of their peak electricity consumption while sitting idle.
- Heat created by servers requires another 125% more electricity for cooling.
- IDC says that the cost to power servers will exceed the cost of servers by next year.
- Growth of data centre energy spending far outpaces the rate at which IT budgets grow.
- The average server consumes 4 times as much power as 10 years ago.
The cost savings for power and space that have resulted from virtualisation have been a surprise to some customers and represent an additional ROI - not always included in the initial justification for investing in virtualisation technologies.
By moving to a virtual infrastructure, organisations can run multiple applications on a single physical server with consolidated storage and networking, significantly reducing their physical space requirements and energy costs.
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