Companies Go Green and Save Tons with VMware Virtualization
Customers Save 39 Billion Kilowatt Hours of Electricity, More than the Power Used Annually to Heat and Cool the Country of Denmark
06 May 2008 Source: www.vmware.com
VMware Software Has Saved Customers 39 Billion Kilowatt Hours of Electricity, More than the Power Used Annually to Heat and Cool the Country of Denmark.
VMware today announced that its virtualization solutions are saving customers tons in costs and CO2 emissions. Using VMware virtualization, customers can consolidate 10 or more physical machines onto a single server and reduce power consumption and cost by 80-90 percent. VMware customers that have moved from a 1:1 application to server ratio to 60:1 or higher have achieved millions of dollars in capital and operational savings.
For every server virtualized, customers can save about 7,000 kilowatt hours (kWh), or four tons of CO2 emissions, every year. VMware has virtualized more than 6 million server workloads since 1998, resulting in an estimated energy savings of nearly 39 Billion kWh, or roughly $4.4 billion. This is roughly equivalent to the total energy consumption of Denmark for one year. PCs virtualized and hosted on servers in the datacenter can also reduce power consumption and cost by 35 percent. Hosting desktops in the datacenter also doubles the replacement cycle of PCs or thin clients, reducing the environmental impact associated with manufacturing new equipment.
"Most servers and desktops today are still consuming 70-80 percent of their rated power even when idle," said Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer, VMware. "VMware is able to deliver substantial power and cost savings through innovative power management capabilities in our virtualization solutions that safely power down or throttle servers when not in use. By powering down servers and desktops during inactive periods such as evenings or weekends, we can help customers save another 25 percent or more on power consumption without affecting applications or users."
Since 2006, VMware has been an active pioneer in working with utility companies to offer incentive programs supporting virtualization projects in datacenters. VMware works with utilities across North America including Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, SDG&E, BC Hydro and Austin Energy to provide customers incentives based on the amount of energy savings achieved through data center consolidation.