How is performance on virtualized servers compared to physical servers? The truth is 95 percent of production databases can be supported as well or better in a virtualized environment than on dedicated physical servers, and at much lower cost.
Data centers consume massive amounts of electricity. A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency states that data centers in the U.S. consume 4.5 billion kWh annually, or 1.5 percent of the country's total electrical consumption.
But virtualization can have a significant impact.
Switch on a server and you've just doubled its cost. According to Gartner, between 2007 and 2012, most U.S. enterprise datacenters will spend as much on power and cooling as on the hardware itself. Couple this with increasing infrastructure demands needed to handle the petabytes of data flowing through organizations as well as increasing energy costs, and Gartner also predicts that energy costs for IT could double by 2012.
Optimizing IT infrastructure is always in season. During challenging times, however, it becomes more than an aspiration: making the most of your IT assets becomes an imperative for competitive advantage, and ultimately, survival. Based on the proven ROI and business success of virtualization for server consolidation, many organizations are looking to extend their virtualization efforts to encompass the entire datacenter, from the OS to the network to the management of those critical business information assets.
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