There are many ways to optimize the data center. But as with all things good, it is necessary to take each step in moderation. Consolidation and virtualization is one way to achieve higher utilization of IT assets. But shrinking the IT assets by more than 30% overnight will create a sudden over-capacity at the physical facility layer. The way to achieve a sustainable overall efficiency in the data center is through finding the right balance between optimization the physical facility and IT consolidation & virtualization.
Virtualization technology coupled with the right management tool is a powerful method to help reduce the total number of IT assets by consolidating multiple workloads into each IT asset, hence, maximizing its utilization, reducing the complexity and management of disparate s
erver hardware and OS platforms. Nonetheless, server virtualization is only one component in a truly virtualized enterprise infrastructure. The other critical component is storage virtualization. Both of these works in tandem – one addresses the compute side of the equation, while the other addresses the data side of it.
