With energy and power costs increasing as the size of IT infrastructures grow, holding expenses to a minimum is quickly becoming a top priority for many IT pros.

1. Virtualization: A Boon for Green Computing
With energy and power costs increasing as the size of IT infrastructures grow, holding expenses to a minimum is
quickly becoming a top priority for many IT pros. Organizations across the world are looking at different ways of
reducing their carbon footprints. Data centers are expanding and so is the increasing executive involvement in
compulsions to reduce global warming. Green computing is an important business agenda that an organization
cannot ignore. It is very much related to other similar movements like reducing the use of environmentally
hazardous materials and supporting the use of recyclable materials minimizing use of non-biodegradable
components, and encouraging use of sustainable resources.
Virtualization has helped in that respect by allowing organizations to consolidate their servers to fewer pieces of
hardware, which can result in sizable cost savings. The datacenter is where virtualization can have the greatest
impact, and that’s where many of the largest companies the virtualization space are investing their resources.
Adopting virtualization does not require a large initial investment, as it can be installed directly onto existing
hardware and operating systems.
What is green computing?
Green computing is the term used to denote efficient use of resources in computing. This term generally relates
to the use of computing resources in conjunction with minimizing environmental impact, maximizing economic
viability and ensuring social duties. Greening your computer equipment is a low risk way for your business
to not only help the environment but also reduce costs. In the data center, it focuses on a set of processes
and approaches designed to make the datacenter more efficient. This means reducing the power and cooling
required. The daily power consumption of a typical datacenter is equivalent to the monthly power consumption of
thousands of homes.
How does virtualization advocate green computing?
One of the primary goals of almost all forms of virtualization is making the most efficient use of available
system resources. With eco reality being integrated into the IT business agenda today, virtualization is the
green computing ace IT companies are betting on. Power saving, is the primary eco-friendly perk of desktop
virtualization. Most servers and desktops are used for 8 to 15 percent of the time when they are powered on, the
machines consume nearly 60-90 percent of power when idle, and virtualization helps reduce energy consumption
by nearly 80-90 percent.
Each server can be consolidated onto a larger virtualized system instead of having one computer for each service
or set of services. This way, resources are utilized to the fullest, and there is a much smaller energy footprint.
There are various advantages of this:
● There is a reduction in the amount of hardware used in the environment
● Virtual servers that are idle can be powered off
● The virtualized server will have diminished idle time and therefore less wastage
● There will be a reduction in the total volume of space, and rent, thereby allowing data centers to
use 100 times the energy per square foot typical office space.
● There rebates offered by power companies for conversion to virtualized systems.
Workspace Virtualization is indeed a boon for green computing, and by proper utilization it can help an
organization reduce hardware, maintenance and administrative costs.
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