Green IT and Virtualization Real Numbers

I did a twitter post the other day talking about a “small 50 server virtualization project” that I’m in the assessment/design phase with a client right now.  A fellow twitterer, @jasonboche sent me a tweet reminding me that every server that is virtualized has a positive environmental impact.  So, I decided to run some numbers on one of our largest server virtualization projects this year and the results really are a great reminder that what we are doing is important. 

We have one client that we have virtualized about 1,000 servers this year alone. Using VMware’s Green Calculator, check out the results. 

• Energy Savings: We saved over 6.6 million kWh of energy and cooling costs for the servers
• Server Hardware: We saved over $5.2 million in hardware costs
• Energy Costs: We saved over $660,000 in power costs

Now, for the Environmental Impact: The project has the equivalent of planting 20,000 trees, taking 1,500 cars off the highway and nearly 8.9 million pounds of carbon emissions. 

For those of us who focus on virtualization consulting and have been around awhile, we sometimes do forget that our efforts go beyond data center and organizational efficiency and have bigger positive impact than just technology and business.