Server virtualization: building energy efficient and high performance data centers to save total cost of ownership

Abstract

The rapid increase in the capacity and size of data centers due to continuous increase in the number of servers and other IT equipment's is causing a tremendous increase in the demand for energy supply. All data centers are plagued with thousands of servers as major components. These servers consume huge energy without performing useful work. In an average server environment, 30 percents of servers are "dead" only consuming energy, without being properly utilized with utilization ratio of 5 to 10 percents. Server virtualization contributes to this problem by offering an opportunity to consolidate multiple underutilized volume servers into single physical server, thereby reducing physical and environmental footprint of data centers. This paper suggests a new technique called server virtualization to be implemented in server based environments to achieve energy efficient data centers. The proposed methodology increases the utilization ratio of underutilized servers up to 50 percents, saving huge amount of energy and at the same time reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.