Effective wins with Green IT

VMWare are really pushing the whole Green IT thing as a significant reason to move to a virtualised environment. I saw this statement on the VMWare website recently (http://info.vmware.com/content/GreenIT_LP)

'Every server virtualized saves 7000kWh of electricity annually, or about $700 in energy costs.'

If true this is a significant saving and yet another very compelling reason to move to server virtualisation. While for most organisations energy savings may not not be the primary reason for switching to a virtual environment it is another easy way to justify the move.

An organisation will typically have around 10-100 desktops for every server and hence similar or great greater savings can be made by implementing energy savings on the desktop than by virtualising servers.

For every desktop that implements energy savings up to 400 kWh can be saved. This figure does not include savings in the air conditioning required to remove waste heat generated from desktops - I would be surprised if the VMWare figure above did not include air conditioning savings. Hence for every 20 desktops implementing power savings you can save at least as much as virtualising a server.

Taken together the savings that can be achieved by, virtualising servers, implementing desktop power management and the resultant reductions in air conditioning costs can add up to a very large amount of money.