End score (consolidation, power etc.)

Our virtualization project has come to an end a while ago but I would like to share the end score and some of the savings achieved with this project:

Our current VI consists of:

• Six cluster hosts (DL585 G2, 48GB memory per host)
  • 120 Virtual Servers (consolidation 20:1)
• Two VDI hosts (DL585 G1, 32GB memory per host)
  • 50 desktops (currently, there’s room for more)
• One dedicated ESX3 host for SAP testing and development purposes
• One dedicated ESX3 host for Lotus Notes / Domino testing and development purposes
  • The above two servers have lower continuity requirements and are therefore stand-alone machines (not part of the cluster)
• 1 Virtual Center Management Server

Real estate saved (focusing on servers only, not the VDI):

• Total rack units used for VI: 30
• Total racks used for VI: 2
• Total rack units saved: 240
• Total racks saved: 8
• Total sq. meters saved: 50 (we would have had to move into a datacenter suite twice as large to accomodate for growth)
• Total real estate cost (OTC) saved: € 30.000 (approx.)
• Total real estate cost (MRC) saved:  € 6.000 (approx.)
  • OTC: One Time Charge
  • MRC: Monthly Recurring Charge

Power savings:

• Extrapolated extra power requirement: 10 – 15 KiloWatts
• Estimated monthly power savings: € 1500 – 2500

There are also additional benefits like the massive increase in continuity, the time saved on provisioning new servers and the transparency in costs.

Power savings through virtualization

As we finally shut down our old SAN we were able to see the effect of virtualization on our power consumption today and we were quite amazed by the results. So far, 33% into our project, we have been able to reduce our power requirement in datacenter 1 by 3.7 KiloWatts (18.7 down to 15.0) and in datacenter 2 by approximately 1.5 KiloWatts. Unfortunately I am not able to calculate a true cost savings from this as I don’t have the pricing for our energy but when we finish it will be significant.

Because we are virtualizing everything to one production datacenter we will eventually be able to shut down datacenter 2 for production (which will mean less stringent requirements on cooling, UPS etc.). It will be interesting to see what the final outcome is for the project.