Green Virtualization, the Future is Now

Virtualization involves moving physical servers, applications, or desktops to virtualized environments. Virtualizing allows users to utilize a single piece of hardware to support multiple systems at the same time. By reducing hardware use, and lowering the energy consumption required to run extra hardware, virtualization provides a powerful green IT solution.

The dawn of “green virtualization” is becoming a promising reality for both business and environmental concerns. Several technological advances are making this possible:

• High efficiency operating systems
• Multi-core processing
• Low energy use chip-sets
• Increased availability of high speed networking
• Advancements in virtualization technology

The benefits of “green virtualization” to both business IT infrastructure and the global environment are tremendous. For businesses green IT through virtualization offers:

1. Ability to provision new applications in minutes rather than days or even weeks

2. Over 80% improvement in recovery from unplanned downtimes

3. Cost savings of up to $3,000 a year for each workload virtualized

4. Reduced hardware maintenance, physical space requirements and energy costs

5. Can deploy multiple applications and operating systems on a single hardware platform

6. Ability to power down underutilized systems during off-peak times

7. Resource management is simplified with virtualized structure versus physical environment

8. Load balancing is made easier over multiple locations

9. Automation of many tedious IT management tasks

10. Improved disaster recovery and storage capabilities

The business advantages of green IT with virtualization are numerous and all encompassing. These advantages will make managing your IT easier and lower operating costs.

So, what are the environmental benefits of switching to virtualization technologies?

• Lower energy usage for both heating and cooling physical hardware
• Lower consumption of real estate for physical server and hardware space
• Less hardware to manage, procure and dispose of into the environment
• Enables the consolidation of people and processes, as well as hardware
• Helps ensure business compliance with government energy mandates
• Increased corporate awareness of environmental issues

“Green virtualization” is here to stay. Green computing, green IT, server virtualization, desktop virtualization, application virtualization and cloud computing will remain hot topics. Environmental and economic issues facing IT managers and business owners (now and into the next decade) make green IT solutions an integral part of any business IT plan. To learn more visit, our Green IT webpage, read some of our Green blogs, or Contact Us for a free Green IT audit and assessment.