18 Feb 2009

Virtualisation 'enables green progress'

Virtualisation technology has helped a new green data centre being praised by experts.

A facility constructed by childrens' organisation Earth Rangers, which promotes saving the planet, is one tenth of the size of regular data centres due to a virtual infrastructure consisting of storage servers.

The project was a joint creation between the group and industry specialists Dell, Nortel, Pillar and VMware and is expected to save over 111,000 kWh per year - 26 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

Virtualisation has reduced the need for energy-intensive desktops, as processing power is now largely being provided by the data centre.

Dr Albert Esser, vice president of power and infrastructure solutions at Dell, says virtualisation "can not only improve energy efficiency, but maximise performance" by enabling more computing and less consumption.

The construction of the facility comes after Syracuse University in New York recently announced plans to build an energy-efficient data centre on its south campus to store student documentation and research results.