VMware vSphere™ 4 Slashes Power Use in the Datacenter with Distributed Power Management
VMware Partners Including Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and NEC Announce Support for VMware Distributed Power Management Feature for Increasing Datacenter Energy Efficiency
PALO ALTO, CA., July 21, 2009 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter and into the cloud, today announced VMware global partners, including Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and NEC have announced their support of using VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) to make their hardware even more power efficient. VMware DPM, part of the VMware vSphere™ 4 platform, lowers power consumption in the datacenter by aggregating unused capacity and powering off unused servers without disrupting service levels, helping customers slash energy consumption by as much as 20 percent.
“We saw an opportunity to save even more power for our customers by focusing on partially used servers in virtualized environments,” said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D at VMware. “VMware DPM essentially performs server defragmentation. VMware DPM determines the best way to consolidate workloads onto the fewest number of physical servers needed to meet the applications’ performance requirements. VMware DPM then powers off unneeded servers to reduce datacenter energy consumption, powering them back on when the performance needs require more physical resources. This is done automatically, without disruption, while ensuring application SLAs are satisfied. Combined with energy-efficient hardware from our server partners, customers have an opportunity to save costs and make a positive impact in their carbon footprints.”
VMware and Global Partners: Combining Intelligent Power Management with Energy-efficient Hardware
“Companies are facing growing pressures to boost the computing output of their datacenters without increasing the associated energy and operational costs or space requirements,” said Sally Stevens, vice president, Platform Marketing, Dell. “The combination of energy-efficient Dell PowerEdge servers with VMware DPM helps our customers minimize the power and cooling needs of their IT infrastructures. The ability to use VMware vSphere™ 4 to shut down unused PowerEdge servers without impacting operations gives our customers an extremely efficient, flexible and reliable datacenter.”
“The need to manage power consumption within the datacenter is coming more and more to the fore as enterprises face increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Jens-Peter Seick, head of the Global x86 Server Product Unit, Fujitsu. “Fujitsu’s Dynamic Infrastructures approach is to deliver the right level of resources, as and when they are needed. Our ServerView Resource Coordinator VE harnesses all the physical and virtual resources within complex IT server topologies, providing unified management and ensuring that resources are available to deliver optimal performance at all times. The introduction of VMware DPM helps customers save energy by optimizing the way that virtual machines operate within a Dynamic Infrastructure.”
“Customers are facing increasing pressures to minimize datacenter power consumption while increasing the IT budget effectiveness,” said Doug Oathout, vice president, Green IT, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. “HP, together with VMware, can deliver highly advanced power management through VMware DPM and HP servers supporting Dynamic Power Capping.”
“Customers will see significant power and cost savings benefits when they use VMware Distributed Power Management and IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager,” said Alex Yost, vice president, Systems & Technology Group. “VMware DPM helps enable customers to cut down on energy consumption by consolidating workloads at low usage times, while IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager predicts and manages energy usage by monitoring and even capping power use. By using these solutions on highly efficient next-generation IBM System x and BladeCenter servers, customers can optimize performance per watt 24 hours a day.”
“As power and cooling costs increase and budgets decrease or flatten, IT organizations can see the long-term value of a dynamic infrastructure that allows them to move forward confidently and meet changing and growing business needs in an efficient manner,” said Marc Hafner, vice president, Servers and System Software Division, IT Platform Group, NEC Corporation of America. “As the foundation for a dynamic IT infrastructure, NEC’s reliable servers have recently been optimized for even greater efficiency. NEC servers, combined with VMware DPM, can help our customers continue to reduce their costs and carbon footprint.”
VMware virtualization has received acclaim for enabling customers to reduce energy costs and consumption in certain cases by as much as 80 percent through server consolidation and dynamic migration of virtual machines across physical servers. VMware DPM provides up to 20 percent additional reduction in energy usage on top of what is possible with consolidation by automatically placing all virtual machines on the fewest number of physical servers and powering down the physical servers that are not necessary to guarantee service levels to applications. A typical use case would be powering down physical servers at night or on weekends when the application loads decrease; as application loads increase at the beginning of the working day, VMware DPM would power on servers and again redistribute the applications.
In addition to using VMware DPM for cluster-wide power optimization, VMware vSphere™ 4 also supports energy-saving technologies from processor partners, such as AMD PowerNow and Intel SpeedStep, for additional power savings.
To learn more about VMware DPM, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/drs_overview.html
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1080
To learn more about reducing power consumption in the datacenter, please visit:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/WhitePaper_ReducePowerConsumption.pdf
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter—bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes. Customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
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