Virtualization: “Green Computing”
“Go Green”. We hear it time and time again. It’s everywhere from the clothes we wear, to the cars we drive, to the hairsprays people use, but the term “Green Computing” is a relatively new one. But what exactly is green computing?
A quick look around the internet throws up many definitions of the term. Most of them focus on a set of processes and approaches designed to make datacentre’s more efficient, by way of reducing the power and cooling required. According to statistics, the daily power consumption of a typical datacentre is the equivalent to the monthly power consumption of a couple of thousand homes.
Exactly how many homes is dependant in the size of the datacentre and the number of systems in the centre. This has become a major issue, and the Environmental Protection Agency has even begun a study on datacentre power consumption.
Green Computing has become the next big thing for suppliers offering virtualization services. One of the primary goals of virtualization is making the most efficient use of available system resources.
For example, many suppliers of management software for virtualizes environments have the ability to transfer workloads to a smaller number of servers when workload and service level agreements allow it. The unused servers can then be turned off.
Companies like DataSynapse, Novell, Scalent and Cassatt all mention this when discussing their products, with Novell showing their green-side for well over a decade now.
You need to ask yourself: What is your business doing to make its operations more efficient? Would your organisation deploy tools such as Novell’s Orchestrator, Cassatt’s Collage or DataSynapse’s MatrixServer to reduce power consumption and heat production while still being able to meet established service level agreements?
You shoul really have a look at this .pdf from VMware explaining how you can cut your costs by going green.
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