According to Patni and Data Centre Management, the credit crunch and recession have put value for money at the top of the business agenda, particularly in the area of IT.  Implementing virtualisation is right up there in the cost saving arena.

They confirm: “Instead of deploying multiple servers to host individual applications, virtualisation equips enterprises with the capability to host a number of virtual servers on one physical server.  This also enables reuse of resources for varied purposes and maximises use of each resource.  Enterprises can thus defer purchase of new servers and shrink costs by reducing the amount of hardware that must be replaced.”

We explain (in simpler English): “You may need slightly ‘beefier’ servers but you will need far fewer of them.  Once you’ve virtualised your servers – particularly with the high availability solutions that we supply – then you can ensure your IT systems stay up and running no matter what; you don’t need new hardware each time you buy a new software package; and you can benefit from reduced energy costs at the same time.”

When you consider that a mid range server costs around £500 per year to run (energy & air con costs) and yet only uses around 10% processing capacity (according to IBM), then that’s a lot of £££ to be saved.

The seven tips (number 3 speaks for itself !):-

• Know your cost cutting sweet spots:  maintenance and support being number 1 – which is typically reduced after virtualising.
• Consolidate everywhere:  this can include people, storage, networks and server (again pointing to virtualisation!)
• Implement virtualisation.
• Automate services:  automate monitoring and repetitive functions, cutting down on manual intervention by administrators.
• Standardise tools and processes:  use standardised tools such as backup, replication and infrastructure across the data centre.
• Opt for an adaptive data centre:  be flexible and address overall growth as well as near and long term effectiveness and complexity.
• Target cost containment through global delivery:  Simply put – have all your servers in one geographical location (perfect for virtualisation !)

Tags: High Availability, high availability solutions, reduce energy costs, server virtualisation, Virtualisation

This entry was posted by Tracy Barlow on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under High Availability, Virtualisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.