IT departments constantly face demands to deploy, maintain and grow a broad array of services and applications, but this has lead to server sprawl and high energy costs. This brief discusses how VMware virtualization helps IT organizations increase utilization, lower energy costs, increase manageability and improve management of future growth.
S O L U T I O N S B R I E F
Server Consolidation and Containment With Virtual Infrastructure
Computing Challenges Today S e r v e r S p r a w lTo meet the constant demand to deploy, maintain and grow 1a broad array of services and applications, , IT organizations . 36M physical x86 servers by 2011-a ten-fold increase in 15 yearsmust continually add new servers. However, as a conse- 2. $140B in excess server capacity-a 3-year supplyquence of purchasing more and more servers, organizations face a growing server sprawl presenting challenges that include: O p e r a t i n g C o s t. Rising costs. In addition to the expense of adding new 2$8 in maintenance for every $1 spent on new infrastructureservers, organizations face the added costs associated . 3with increasing hardware-rising costs for power, cooling, . 20-30 :1 server-to-admin rationetwork infrastructure, storage infrastructure, server admin-istration, data center upgrades and new data centers. P o w e r & C o o l i n g. Poor return on investment. The common practice of ded- 2icating a single server to each x86 application and sizing it . 50c for every $1 spent on serversfor peak loads has led to severe underutilization of server 2. $29B in power and cooling industry wideassets in most data centers. IDC estimates that there is cur-rently more than $140 billion in server overcapacity, or a 2 three-year supply of server capacity. While servers typically Server sprawl leads to poor utilization, excessive operating expense and rampant run at 5-15% CPU utilization, traditional business process power and cooling costs.and technology limitations make it difficult to improve these utilization rates. structure also simplifies server deployment and automates resource management to optimize capacity and infrastructure management.. Decreasing manageability. Managing servers becomes increasingly difficult as the number of servers grows and VMware virtualization technology makes it possible to package a the number of applications continue to multiply. Adding complete x86 server-hardware, operating system, applications, to that challenge is the heterogeneous mix of hardware, and configurations-into a portable virt ual machine package. server models, operating systems and configurations that IT Multiple virtual machines can then run simultaneously and inde-departments need to support. pendently on a single x86 server with consolidation ratios often exceeding 5 virtual machines per host processor. . Reduced efficiency. As server sprawl increases, IT orga-nizations are forced to spend more time on reactive tasks Over 40% of VMware's enterprise customers have made virtual such as server provisioning, configuration, monitoring and machines the default platform for all newly provisioned servers. maintenance. This leaves less time for proactive, strategic Fulfilling requests for new servers with virtual machines does not projects to improve infrastructure and service levels. require purchasing new physical servers and improves utilization.
Consolidating and Containing Servers Maximize Resources through VirtualizationConsolidation and containment solutions implemented VMware technology is used by more than 20,000 enterprise with VMware Infrastructure meet the challenges of customers and provides a simple, proven solution for consolidat-server sprawl and underutilization by reducing hardware ing servers. Each workload that previously required a dedicated and operating costs by as much as 50%. A virtual infra- physical server can be placed in a virtual machine, making it simple to consolidate multiple workloads onto each physical server. The conversion process is made simple with VMwareŽ Converter, which "VMware software probably saved us several hundred thousand dollars within automates the conversion of Windows servers into virtual machines.a year on hardware purchases alone. As QUALCOMM grows, we anticipate even greater savings." In addition to consolidating servers today, implementing VMware Paul Poppleton, IT Manager, QUALCOMM virtual infrastructure provides a solution to contain future server S E R V E R C O N S O L I D AT I O N A N D C O N TA I N M E N T S O LU T I O N S B R I E F
growth. More than 40% of VMware customers have made virtual machines the default platform for all newly provi- VirtualCenter Management Softwaresioned servers. Fulfilling requests for new servers with virtual machines def... [download for more]
