SCC argues for server consolidation
In the wake of a House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee statement that both government and industry must be more ambitious in their pursuit of greener IT policies, SCC CTO Rhys Sharp has called upon organisations to embrace server consolidation as a vital step towards reducing their carbon footprint.
Highlighting European Data Centre codes of practice recommending the move, Sharp believes the consolidation route offers companies the ability to drastically reduce both their power consumption and IT overheads.
“The industry may not have come up with instant answers to the environmental question, but various technologies are now coming together that can greatly help reduce organisations’ carbon footprints, while the environmental savings possible from server consolidation are increasing all the time,” says Sharp.
“This isn’t brain surgery. By simply reducing the number of servers by a typical 5:1 consolidation ratio, companies are going to see four or five times less power consumed by the server. There’s less cooling required, generating further savings, and we’re now seeing the introduction of new technologies that throttle back on the server’s CPU performance when it’s not being used, reducing power consumption even more.”
Research shows that by consolidating their servers, companies can reduce their systems’ carbon footprint by 90 percent whilst freeing up 89 percent of available floor space. Despite such figures, however, it is estimated that up to 50 percent of UK companies have failed to implement such a strategy.
Sharp adds: “We’ve seen a lot of adoption in the test and development areas, so clearly there are many firms prepared to dabble in this. Because some of the software vendors have been reluctant to support their products on the virtualised platform however, full scale migration has proved to be a step too far for many organisations.
“There is no doubt that this reluctance on the part of software vendors has been a major obstacle. But as time wears on and product becomes much more mature in the marketplace, we’re finally seeing vendors begin to take more of an interest, so that barrier is starting to break down now.”
In addition to its environmental impact, server consolidation can also have a marked impact on costs. Recent research from SCC revealed that by carrying out such a strategy, up to half of UK organisations would be able to reduce their IT operating costs by 50 percent whilst enjoying a healthy return on investment (ROI) within eight months.
