October 6th, 2009

@ Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit: Report from Trenches: What’s Working in Virtualization & Green IT

Reports from the Trenches: What’s Working in Virtualization and Green IT, moderated by Larry Hale, Director, Office of Infrastructure Optimization, GSA

Panelists:

  • Jack Baxter, Manager, IT&S, Government Printing Office
  • Richard Fichera, Director, Blade Systems Strategy, HP
  • Bernard Golden, CEO, HyperStratus
  • Dale Wicklizer, US Public Sector CTO, NetApp

Larry Hale has some starter questions for the panel:

1. Biggest challenges in adopting virtualization?

Jack Baxter: Greatest challenges: application qualification, funding, hardware and how it’s going to be used.  Heterogeneous environment calls for a lot of up-front research.

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Tagged as: 1105, Amazon, archives, FISMA, Google, government, green, GSA, HP, live coverage, NetApp, Terremark, VMWare

Posted by brenda michelson at 5:55 pm in adoption, Blog, sustainability, virtualization | Permalink | Comments(0)
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October 6th, 2009

@ Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit: Tod Nielsen, VMWare

Energize and Save, Tod Nielsen, Chief Operating Officer, VMWare, opening keynote

Todd starts by talking about all of the government agencies VMWare works with.  The list is extensive.  One example, the CIA is virtualizing 4000 servers, saving millions in capital and energy costs.

Gartner factoid, 89% of virtualized apps run on VMWare (dated December 2008).

Early in virtualization journey, 0 – 20% virtualized, the big savings is Capex.  These projects are typically for IT owned assets, file and print, mail etc.  Next phase, is line of business applications, the concerns here shift from just capex to “speeds and feeds”, business continuity, up-time.  Often, these are less critical, tier 2 and 3 applications.  Todd shares anecdote of organization where CIO was concerned that tier 2 and 3 had better up-time than tier 1, response tiers 2 – 3 are virtualized, was driver for tier 1 virtualization as well.  So, capex, energy and up-time.

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Tagged as: 1105, archives, capex, green, live coverage, opex, Tod Nielsen, VMWare

Posted by brenda michelson at 10:54 am in Blog, data center advances, provider positions, sustainability, virtualization | Permalink | Comments(0)
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August 21st, 2008

What does that cheap server really cost?

Kenneth G. Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute, has an eye opening piece in Forbes on the full cost to purchase, house and run cheap ($2,500) servers.  In his work, Brill aggregates facility related server costs that are typically dispersed across several budgets:

"Data-center building depreciation is often carried separately from data-center mechanical and electrical equipment. Utility bills often go to a centralized energy function. Site operation costs for technicians, security staff, power and cooling equipment maintenance, property taxes and other costs are often split between facilities and IT budgets. Nowhere is the total picture consolidated."

What Brill found is that "Annual facility costs will exceed the cost of a "cheap" server in two years in the best case scenario, or 14 months in the worst."  In other words, "Spending $2,500 on a server really means spending between $8,300 and $15,400 in facility capital to provide the necessary space for housing the server and powering it."

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Tagged as: archives, datacenter, green, server

Posted by brenda michelson at 1:21 pm in Blog, economics, infrastructure | Permalink | Comments(0)
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