How Companies are Getting Their Computers to Work Harder
January 29, 2007
By Christopher Lawton
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116974908405887934.html
Jason Glauch was running out of room. At the end of 2005, the senior systems analyst for Viejas Casino in Alpine, Calif., had filled three rooms with servers that monitored slot machines, ran sales systems in the restaurants and handled other critical tasks. And his staff was asking for 21 more units.
Without space to add new machines, Mr. Glauch decided to get more out of the ones he already had. Using software from VMware Inc., he started "virtualizing" his servers -- making one machine do the work of many.
By April 2006, Mr. Glauch had virtualized seven of his Dell Inc. servers, allowing them to carry the workload of 70 machines. The move saved the casino from spending nearly $150,000 on new servers, not to mention finding extra room to house them all.
Powering and cooling computers costs more than the machines themselves. Now, new technologies are reducing those expenses. And even as the price of individual components falls, the total cost of running all those desktop computers, servers and data centers continues to be a headache for executives.
"We are doing a whole lot more with less these days," Mr. Glauch says.
Executives across the country are learning to do the same. With IT costs rising and space in computer rooms dwindling, companies are testing out a host of methods to keep server sprawl under control and make the machines they already have work harder. Some, like Mr. Glauch, are turning to virtualization software. Others are using slimmer servers to pack more computing power into the same amount of space.
From One, Many
In particular, analysts say virtualization will play an increasingly important role in the enterprise market. In 2010, close to 15% of the new servers shipped will be virtualized, versus just 4.5% of the new servers shipped in 2005, according to IDC. "We think virtualization is probably the most disruptive technology for the server world," says Michelle Bailey, research vice president for enterprise platforms at IDC, a market-research firm.
The appeal is simple. In the past, companies usually ran only one software application per server -- for fear of crashing the machine -- meaning as little as 5% of a server's computing power would be used on average. Using virtualization, tech managers can essentially divide one machine into several -- and thus host on average eight different applications on each server. (These results depend on the size of the server and the application.) That means between 60% and 80% of a machine's computing power gets used on average, says Bogomil Balkansky, director of product marketing for VMware, a unit of EMC Corp., of Hopkinton, Mass.
Some businesses are combining virtualization with additional solutions, such as blade servers. Blade servers are more expensive than regular servers, but they save a tremendous amount of space. Most standard servers are arranged horizontally in racks, like a stack of pizza boxes. Blade servers come in similar racks, but are smaller and are stacked vertically, like books on a shelf, taking up less space and making it easy to slide replacement units in and out. The servers plug into a structure called a backplane that allows them to share power supplies and networking connections.
Though blade servers accounted for only about 7% of the roughly seven million servers shipped in 2005, IDC estimates, that percentage is projected to swell to 26% by the end of the decade. That's a fivefold jump in unit sales, compared with a projected 33% increase over the same period for conventional servers.
Bryan Peterson, the principal systems engineer for the University of Utah's health-care arm in Salt Lake City, turned to blades about two and a half years ago. He was working on a system for electronically filing medical forms at the facility -- which meant the data center would have to be online and functioning at all times, to ensure that doctors got up-to-date information about patients. But the facility's roughly 3,000-square-foot data center was already filled with 500 rack-mounted servers. There wasn't enough room to add more.
Mr. Peterson decided to gradually replace the 500 servers with blade servers from Hewlett-Packard Co. "By using blades, we are able to use half the amount of space for the same amount of servers," says Mr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson replaced server racks that contained 22 servers with similar-size blade racks that contained 40 blade servers. There was an increase to power and cooling costs, because Mr. Peterson was running 40 servers in the same square footage that used to hold 22. But it was a fraction of the cost of increasing the size of the data center or building a new one, Mr. Peterson says.
Today, the university's data center has roughly 300 blade servers and roughly 300 rack-mounted servers in the same space as the 500 old ones. The university expects to save between $2.5 million and $3.5 million by 2008 on building and equipment costs.
Mr. Peterson says he's only in the first phase of the implementation. He began using virtualization software in early 2006 to further consolidate the server farm. Mr. Peterson says he now uses as much as 60% of his servers' computing capacity, up from roughly 7%.
Slicing Power
Some companies are using virtualization and blade servers to cut the total number of servers they use -- which helps free up space and in some cases cut power use. Lee Hudson, technology director at Zumiez Inc., an action-sports retailer in Everett, Wash., saw his company's data center more than double in size in 2005 as the business grew.
Over the past 12 months, Mr. Hudson decided he needed an additional six rack-mounted servers to handle the increased load. Though there was enough physical space for the additional servers, Mr. Hudson realized that the data center was already utilizing 95% of its available power load. Mr. Hudson first looked into upgrading the power supply, but he was given quotes as high as $100,000. "We couldn't plug anything in. I could have bought more racks, but I didn't have any more outlets," says Mr. Hudson. "There was no more juice."
So, he decided to invest in blade servers from International Business Machines Corp. Mr. Hudson removed 12 rack servers from the 150-square-foot data center and replaced them with six blade servers. Using virtualization software, he increased the servers' workload, so the six new ones did the job of the 12 old ones.
By taking six servers out of operation, Mr. Hudson reduced the utilization of the data center's power supply to just under 80% -- and delayed any power upgrades for Zumiez for at least the next year. "We've seen a big performance increase. There hasn't been anything negative at all," Mr. Hudson says.