Getting Green
Decreasing the impact of hardware on the environment and IT’s bottom line through more efficient and better performing application delivery platforms.
There’s been a lot of hype over the past year about “green” computing and the drive to lower the impact of IT and data centers on the environment. While just about everyone can get behind the concept of green computing and reducing the impact of computing on our environment, we should also be aware that every IT organization also has to worry about the other kind of green: its bottom line.
The good news is that there is some amount of overlap between these green computing goals. Reducing power consumption and management expenses while also increasing effi ciency of existing resources through consolidation and virtualization decreases both the impact of devices on the environment and on IT’s increasingly tightening budget.
Going Green
Power and Heat
The easiest way to reduce the impact of any device on the bottom line, be it a server or networking equipment, is to reduce the amount of power it requires. Modern servers often draw variable amounts of power based on the processing power in use by applications. Similarly, some networking equipment and other devices provide the same functionality, drawing varying amounts of power based on their load and confi guration. This can be benefi cial in reducing the operating cost of the server or device, but like dealing with variable costs of bandwidth due to bursts in usage, it also makes it diffi cult to estimate annual costs and budget appropriately.
Another simple, but often overlooked, facet is how many BTUs (British thermal units) are generated by any given device. One BTU is the energy required to raise one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. By decreasing the BTUs generated, there is less heat generated and thus less cooling required within the data center. The costs of cooling a data center are often more signifi cant than those required to heat it, because heat—and not cooling—is naturally generated by devices. Reducing these costs can have a signifi cant impact on the operating expenses of any IT organization.
Reducing power consumption and generation of BTUs for devices and servers is something over which IT has no control. While IT can certainly use such ratings as part of its decision making process for purchasing, it really can’t affect how much power is consumed or how many BTUs are generated by any given device. It’s simply a cost of doing business.
Yet IT can make decisions, both in purchasing and architecture, which reduce power consumption and heat generation by reducing the number of servers and devices that make up its data center. Consolidation and virtualization are both ways in which IT can positively impact its bottom line.
Consolidation
Consolidation has been an “initiative” in IT for many years. It generally revolves around the consolidation of the data center in terms of the number of servers deployed to support mission-critical applications. While reducing the number of servers in the data center, and thus rack density, both power consumption and heat generation can be positively affected.
Yet capacity needs must be balanced with consolidation efforts, and at some point consolidation is no longer possible. As the volume of users and application usage grows, so must the number of servers—and devices such as Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)—necessary to scale mission-critical applications.
Striking a balance between scalability and controlling costs is diffi cult, and thus far it has been nearly impossible to avoid the deployment of additional ADCs as a way to scale a data center. Whether chassis or appliance-based, these devices have only added to the cost of power consumption and increased the generation of heat within the data center, boosting operational costs.
Solving this problem requires effort from the ADC vendor to reduce the power consumption and BTU generation of devices while simultaneously providing a way to scale without increasing the number of devices required for data center deployment. A single, chassis-based ADC requiring less power and generating fewer BTUs that also scales via a virtualized bladed architecture can address the growing need for capacity without adversely impacting IT’s bottom line, or the environment.
Virtualization
By architecting a new breed of chassis-based ADCs that take advantage of virtualization not only at the server level but also at the chassis and blade level, these new devices can provide better performance in a single unit than could previously be obtained with multiple appliance-based solutions or legacy chassis-models.
By virtualizing blades and CPUs—essentially creating a single, powerful processing matrix—this new breed of chassis-based ADC can scale nearly linearly. This internal processing scalability means that every last ounce of processing power is used and this device can provide a much higher capacity than its legacy ancestors. By more efficiently using the processing power available, the performance per power ADC unit is increased, making the power consumption of each transaction cost a
fraction of what would otherwise be possible.
Conclusion
It’s rare that an environmental friendly movement such as green IT results in reducing costs, especially in its early stages. And yet in the case of this new breed of chassis-based ADCs, that’s exactly the result. With the decreased management and power consumption costs and increased performance, these new ADCs are both green like the Earth and green as in cash.
Decreasing the impact of hardware on the environment and IT’s bottom line through more efficient and better performing application delivery platforms.
There’s been a lot of hype over the past year about “green” computing and the drive to lower the impact of IT and data centers on the environment. While just about everyone can get behind the concept of green computing and reducing the impact of computing on our environment, we should also be aware that every IT organization also has to worry about the other kind of green: its bottom line.
The good news is that there is some amount of overlap between these green computing goals. Reducing power consumption and management expenses while also increasing effi ciency of existing resources through consolidation and virtualization decreases both the impact of devices on the environment and on IT’s increasingly tightening budget.
Going Green
Power and Heat
The easiest way to reduce the impact of any device on the bottom line, be it a server or networking equipment, is to reduce the amount of power it requires. Modern servers often draw variable amounts of power based on the processing power in use by applications. Similarly, some networking equipment and other devices provide the same functionality, drawing varying amounts of power based on their load and confi guration. This can be benefi cial in reducing the operating cost of the server or device, but like dealing with variable costs of bandwidth due to bursts in usage, it also makes it diffi cult to estimate annual costs and budget appropriately.
Another simple, but often overlooked, facet is how many BTUs (British thermal units) are generated by any given device. One BTU is the energy required to raise one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. By decreasing the BTUs generated, there is less heat generated and thus less cooling required within the data center. The costs of cooling a data center are often more signifi cant than those required to heat it, because heat—and not cooling—is naturally generated by devices. Reducing these costs can have a signifi cant impact on the operating expenses of any IT organization.
Reducing power consumption and generation of BTUs for devices and servers is something over which IT has no control. While IT can certainly use such ratings as part of its decision making process for purchasing, it really can’t affect how much power is consumed or how many BTUs are generated by any given device. It’s simply a cost of doing business.
Yet IT can make decisions, both in purchasing and architecture, which reduce power consumption and heat generation by reducing the number of servers and devices that make up its data center. Consolidation and virtualization are both ways in which IT can positively impact its bottom line.
Consolidation
Consolidation has been an “initiative” in IT for many years. It generally revolves around the consolidation of the data center in terms of the number of servers deployed to support mission-critical applications. While reducing the number of servers in the data center, and thus rack density, both power consumption and heat generation can be positively affected.
Yet capacity needs must be balanced with consolidation efforts, and at some point consolidation is no longer possible. As the volume of users and application usage grows, so must the number of servers—and devices such as Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)—necessary to scale mission-critical applications.
Striking a balance between scalability and controlling costs is diffi cult, and thus far it has been nearly impossible to avoid the deployment of additional ADCs as a way to scale a data center. Whether chassis or appliance-based, these devices have only added to the cost of power consumption and increased the generation of heat within the data center, boosting operational costs.
Solving this problem requires effort from the ADC vendor to reduce the power consumption and BTU generation of devices while simultaneously providing a way to scale without increasing the number of devices required for data center deployment. A single, chassis-based ADC requiring less power and generating fewer BTUs that also scales via a virtualized bladed architecture can address the growing need for capacity without adversely impacting IT’s bottom line, or the environment.
Virtualization
By architecting a new breed of chassis-based ADCs that take advantage of virtualization not only at the server level but also at the chassis and blade level, these new devices can provide better performance in a single unit than could previously be obtained with multiple appliance-based solutions or legacy chassis-models.
By virtualizing blades and CPUs—essentially creating a single, powerful processing matrix—this new breed of chassis-based ADC can scale nearly linearly. This internal processing scalability means that every last ounce of processing power is used and this device can provide a much higher capacity than its legacy ancestors. By more efficiently using the processing power available, the performance per power ADC unit is increased, making the power consumption of each transaction cost a
fraction of what would otherwise be possible.
Conclusion
It’s rare that an environmental friendly movement such as green IT results in reducing costs, especially in its early stages. And yet in the case of this new breed of chassis-based ADCs, that’s exactly the result. With the decreased management and power consumption costs and increased performance, these new ADCs are both green like the Earth and green as in cash.
