A Sun-sponsored IT director's guide asserts consolidating systems onto the latest server technology and utilizing virtualization techniques will give enterprises increased efficiency, performance and flexibility while lowering costs. In twelve pages, this guide entitled "Reducing Costs by Improving Server Performance" offers what it states is proof that consolidation works, and focuses on Sun servers with CoolThreads technology and Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers as solutions that can bring these claims to reality.

To make its point, the guide offers multiple case studies on datacenter consolidation and migration to Sun solutions. It uses itself as one example, sharing the company's experience in creating its next-generation datacenter at Sun's Colorado campus.

In Colorado, Sun consolidated facilities supporting Sun’s storage engineering, corporate, and customer support groups by replacing older servers and storage systems with the latest Sun technology. Sun compressed datacenter rooms from nine buildings occupying 496,000 feet of space into a new, next-generation datacenter occupying 126,000 feet. Reportedly in one area, the team consolidated 63 servers and 30 direct attached storage devices onto two Sun Fire X4600 servers utilizing Solaris Zones technology and VMware ESX Server software.

In addition, the virtual tape library group replaced 19 legacy enterprise-class servers with two Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers using Dynamic Domains and Solaris Containers to partition the hardware and replicate the application environments that were running on the old systems. In the end, Sun achieved an impressive 88% square footage compression and avoided building 5,000 feet of datacenter space, saving the company $2.3 million.

According to the guide, Sun was able to avoid $4 million in building costs for raised floors, decrease power consumption by more than one million kilowatt hours per month, increase chiller efficiency by 32%, remove lead and chemical waste, and reduce costs with free cooling for more than one-third of the year.

The guide also publishes reports from Sun's own Space, Watts, and Performance (SWaP) metric, which calculates the performance of rack optimized servers in relation to power and space efficiency. Basically, SWaP equals performance divided by space times power. Comparisons between the of the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server, HP rx6600 Server, and IBM p 570 Server show that the Sun CoolThreads server use less energy and occupy less datacenter space than systems from other vendors, without sacrificing performance.

Virtualization aspects of the paper cover Logical Domains and Solaris Containers, and how Sun server virtualization technology offers choice and flexibility, from support for one or more operating system instances, to little or complete isolation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Optimize datacenter efficiency with consolidation

• Proof that consolidation works
• Refresh the datacenter with the latest server technology: Sun servers with CoolThreads technology and Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers
• Virtualize for even greater savings
• Putting it all together

Upgrade safely and easily

• Try, buy, upgrade, and save

More Information

Reducing Costs by Improving Server Performance - the IT Director's Guide

Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) Servers

Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers

Sun Virtualization

Enterprise Technology Refresh Plan [...read more...]

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