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Increased awareness of how carbon dioxide emissions affect our climate has sparked a renewed interest in energy conservation on many levels. Green computing is one resulting development that entails using computer resources more efficiently in order to reduce waste. Of course, in the current business environment it may be difficult to justify a green computing initiative unless your bottom line improves as well. Fortunately, green computing initiatives not only reduce your company’s carbon footprint, they can also save you a considerable amount of money. 

 

 

Three of the largest ongoing costs associated with computer systems are power, cooling, and space for your equipment. In a datacenter where large numbers of servers and related equipment are installed, the cost for electricity is in the tens of thousands of dollars per month. The enormous cooling units used in these facilities are expensive to purchase as well as to maintain. Backup power is often provided through diesel generators that are also costly to deploy.

 

 

Enter Virtualization. At the simplest level, virtualization is separating out a physical computer into multiple virtual computers in such a way that each appears to be running on its own physical machine. There are many benefits of virtualization, but the one most relevant to Green Computing is energy savings. 

 

To demonstrate, imagine you have three computers by your desk, all running at the same time, with a switch box allowing you to use your monitor and keyboard for any of the three computers. To virtualize, you install special software on one of your computers, then copy the data from the other two computers onto the first. You now have all three virtual computers on and running at the same time on one computer and simply switch between them using your virtualization software. None of your programs would behave differently than before, and for all intents and purposes, all three virtual computers would be separate from each other. 

 

In this scenario, you would suddenly have two computers you no longer need, only a third of the electricity cost, and an office that is no longer toasty from all the heat generated by three computers. 

 

This basic concept of computer virtualization can be used in most areas of your business. The accounting staff person who has held on to her previous computer because of the older software she must access periodically, can virtualize. The developer who has two computers for testing software can virtualize both of them on his primary computer. You can consolidate your web, file, database, and email servers onto a single virtual server. The possibilities are virtually endless.

 

Cost savings is one of many virtualization benefits, and most mid-to-large deployments of servers rely heavily on a virtualized infrastructure. VMware, Microsoft, and Xen are the three largest developers of commercial virtualized software, and the major hardware vendors, such as Dell, HP, and IBM, all offer hardware that is ready for virtualized environments. A program commonly used by Mac users called Parallelis allows a Mac computer to run Windows and Mac OS at the same time. VMware Workstation allows any Windows user to install multiple virtual machines on their desktop computer. Since virtualization is a mature technology that has been available for years, systems are increasingly easy to deploy and more cost effective. Increasingly, we see virtualization as a viable solution for companies with as few as two servers and a dozen desktops. 

 

 

Although it varies widely, in a typical virtualization scenario you would pay 40% less in energy costs associated with heating and cooling your computers. You may also free up valuable real estate in your office by reducing the number of servers in your data and communications closet. Furthermore, since you would be subsequently purchasing less hardware, your capital outlays would likely be lower as well.

 

So, is there a catch? As you have probably guessed, a computer that is running virtual machines needs to be powerful enough to handle all of the software at once. If your computer can barely handle running your current programs without giving you fits, it’s not likely to get any better if you add two virtual computers onto it. However, just because you are running three virtual computers on a single machine does not mean the computer must be three-times as powerful. I am using hardly any of my computer’s resources while typing this article in Microsoft Word—and my computer, believe it or not, is nothing fancy, just a standard Dell laptop. Only when my laptop does tasks like booting up, running a virus scan, searching for a file, or streaming video from a website does it come close to utilizing its full capability. The same goes for most servers. If your office relies on three servers that provide different roles to your organization, chances are they can easily be virtualized because they will not each need 100% of the available hardware resources at the same time.  

 

While a computer capable of hosting multiple virtual computers may cost more than your average desktop or server, it is not vastly more expensive. Additionally, over time you will achieve considerable savings through reduced power, cooling, and storage costs. The ideal time to consider a virtualized environment is when your existing server equipment is close to the end of its life cycle, since you will have to replace the hardware anyway. Discuss the options with your IT team to determine if you can benefit from a greener IT environment through virtualization.