The organization mentioned earlier held an independent survey to research weather their server operating systems are capable to virtualize. The outcome of the report showed a consolidation ratio of 8 to 1. Hange on a little more and I tell you what a consolidation ratio means. This is when you virtualize servers, which is all about making the operation system independent of the hardware so you can have a better server utilization. Hope I didn’t lose you at this point.

In simple words. The report showed that for every physical server they now can run them on less hardware. The 85 physical servers can be consolidated on 8.5 servers. In other words, the total server park can run on 10 or 11 physical servers in stet of 85.

Now comes the clue. For power consumption this means that they can shutdown 74 servers. On average a server consumes 600 Watt an hour. Multiplied by 24 hours * 365 days means they can save up to 5256000 Watt a year.

I know this is not a technology forum but I know there are people out there who have a green hart, aren’t into IT, but have a lot of servers in their organization. So please spread the word to your IT department to start virtualize servers and ultimately also desktops.

More information about virtualization can be found on Wikipedia