VMware 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.

Sheffield Hallam University Virtualizes with VMware, Cuts 269 Tons of CO2 and Saves £43,000 on Power Bills Annually
Sheffield Hallam, one of the UK’s universities with more than 28,000 students and over 5,000 staff, required a number of new IT services to support its user community. This led to the number of servers within the datacenter doubling within twelve months. The building’s electricity grid could not supply enough power to reliably support the required number of servers within the main datacenter, and physical space was also a major issue.

Sheffield Hallam is using VMware’s datacenter virtualization and management platform, VMware Infrastructure 3, to reduce power and cooling requirements in the datacenter and improve the delivery of IT services. VMware Infrastructure 3 provides the capability for automatic load balancing, business continuity and power management and the ability to move a virtual machine across physical machines to minimize service interruption.

“With the server farm growing towards capacity, we knew a completely new strategy was required,” said Dave Thornley, service support manager, Sheffield Hallam University. “We decided that moving to a virtual infrastructure would be the most effective way to tackle cost management and space issues. Using VMware, we have made a huge impact on our power bills as well as leading to major savings in the deployment of new services to users.”