Executive Summary
Going green has become an
imperative, not an option, for companies facing the new reality of
balancing business objectives with dwindling environmental
resources. Limited energy supply and skyrocketing costs are
compelling organizations to take radical measures to reduce their
carbon footprint.
IT is perhaps taking the biggest hit, with energy consumption in
the datacenter reaching all time highs and with proliferating
computer hardware fated to become electronic waste (e-waste). As IT
seeks to adopt a sustainable approach, conservation of electricity,
space and equipment threatens to work at
cross-purposes with essential company expansion and growth.
Rest assured, green IT can be achieved without compromise to
business performance. Citrix virtualization – in which
applications run independent of platform, server and desktop
operating systems run virtualized on device hardware – enables IT
organizations to deliver on business mandates
while minimizing energy consumption and waste.
Read on to learn how Citrix products can help bring environmental
and organizational objectives into alignment by alleviating the
energy impact of equipment needed to serve both the datacenter and
the desktop. You’ll discover how Citrix XenServer™, Citrix
XenApp™ and Citrix XenDesktop™ work independently, and in
concert, to dramatically reduce your carbon footprint as well as
your power costs.
Introduction
Diminishing resources and
rising costs are compelling companies to go green.
Energy fuels business as it expands into global markets and beyond.
More partners, suppliers and customers translates into more
offices, equipment and resources, which, in turn, need more and
more energy to support and maintain growth.
Gone are the days of one employee = one computer. Now, laptops,
handhelds, home office PCs and so forth are the norm, spurring an
explosion of computing devices – all of which incur a carbon
footprint whether in use or rendered obsolete. Meanwhile, the
datacenter has become business
central, picking up the slack of IT consolidation and bearing the
energy burden in the process.
Yet as the demand for energy increases, the supply is decreasing,
with the planet and the power companies nearing the tipping point.
Seeking to hedge against an uncertain environmental future and to
offset soaring energy costs, companies are looking for ways to go
green and reduce their carbon
footprint. The new bottom line – adding social responsibility and
environmental impact to economic viability – calls for
unprecedented energy efficiency and cutbacks.
IT has become the largest energy consumer.
The pressure is especially on for IT, now responsible for consuming
the lion’s share of the company power bill – with computing now
accounting for over 2% of worldwide energy usage. By the end of
2008, according to Gartner, half of the world’s datacenters
won’t have enough energy capacity to
meet the power and cooling requirements of the latest high-density
computing equipment, such as blade servers.1 Also consider that
over the course of a year, a large corporate IT infrastructure, for
example, may consume as much as the energy produced by five power
plants over the same time period. With supply dwindling and
government regulation looming, this level of consumption is simply
not sustainable.
Datacenters: The SUVs of the Enterprise
The
move toward IT centralization and consolidation has created a power
surge in the datacenter, with energy costs, in some cases, more
than doubling. The bulk of energy consumption is in running the
servers, air conditioning and peripherals at the heart of the IT
infrastructure. Estimates ascertain
that for every kilowatt of energy consumed by a server, roughly
another kilowatt is used to cool that same server. When you
multiply that by the growing number of servers needed to
accommodate business expansion, the impact can be staggering.
The key to carbon footprint reduction in the datacenter lies not
only in reducing the number of physical servers, but also in
optimizing server utilization. Consider the amount of energy needed
to support corporate email, for example. Let’s say that it takes
four dedicated servers to handle email traffic,
failover and redundancy. In any modern data center, these servers
would most likely only exhibit an average of 50% utilization or
less. Even at this utilization, however, each server still consumes
100% of power. This inefficiency compounds exponentially for each
company function supported by a
dedicated server farm.
The Desktop: Potentially A Larger Problem
The desktop – all those networked computing devices, printers,
copiers, etc. hard at work in the enterprise – may turn out to be
the bigger green IT challenge. With a single network server
supporting only about 200 devices, energy consumption in the
datacenter will escalate as these machines continue to proliferate.
Furthermore, each device draws a lot of power on its own, even when
in sleep or standby mode – consuming yet more energy. When scaled
to thousands of users, the power bill – destined to become
entirely an IT budget line item – really adds up.
The cradle to grave environmental impact of these devices poses yet
another concern, especially when it comes to replacing and
disposing obsolete machines – some yielding only a two-year life
span. Hazardous materials found in these devices, such as lead,
cadmium and mercury, require special
handling for disposal, which may end up costing as much as $200 per
device in aggregate disposal costs. Better yet would be to
standardize on machines that pose less of a toxic threat and
promise a significantly longer life.
Leasing fails to circumvent this problem. Organizations may think
they can escape disposal costs through leasing when in fact they
actually absorb this expense. Furthermore, since leased machines
are not considered corporate assets, a company cannot benefit from
full depreciation. A more preferable option would be to purchase
these machines and extend their lives far beyond the current
two-year cycle.
Imposing constraints will only serve to hinder business
growth.
Not surprisingly, the race is on to find the best way to reduce
carbon footprint without negatively impacting business performance.
Most IT organizations realize that simply putting constraints on
datacenter space, power and cooling abilities is not a viable
option as it will only hinder, not help, future company growth.
Let’s take a look at some other IT options:
Bigger Servers
Large servers that can
support multiple services are useful for consolidating some
services. Unfortunately, this would provide limited relief, as many
SLAs specifically require separation of services provided to
various business units.
More Efficient Servers
It’s tempting to
try and get more out of existing servers, especially those that may
not have reached full depreciation. However, increasing server
efficiency would require significant re-tooling of the datacenter
and wouldn’t decrease the actual number of servers in use. Also
consider that these servers will still be underutilized and
consuming more energy than necessary – as little as 30%
utilization with 50% power consumption, for example. Utilization
increase must go hand-in-hand with decreased power consumption to
net real results.
Next-gen Zero Carbon Datacenters
Some large
organizations are building zero-carbon datacenters fed by clean
hydroelectric power. While this option is not cost-effective for
smaller organizations with mid-sized datacenters, it is
particularly attractive to high-density computing installations
featuring thousands of servers and requiring
enormous amounts of power.
Green Hardware Initiatives
Many
organizations are turning toward energy efficient hardware and
improved disposal of e-waste. Initiatives such as Energy Start, a
voluntary labeling program conceived by the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) in 1992, as well as the EPEAT, an
environmental procurement tool designed
to help companies evaluate, compare and select computing hardware,
are picking up momentum.
However, this alone is not enough to adequately offset an
organization’s carbon footprint.
Going Green with Citrix
Citrix
virtualization optimizes carbon footprint reduction without
compromise to business performance.
Virtualization is fast emerging as the solution of choice for going
green without compromising business performance. Citrix
virtualization does double duty, and then some – minimizing the
number of running servers in the datacenter while maximizing their
utilization as well as extending the life of the desktop and
curbing e-waste. By separating the physical from the logical,
virtualization frees computing resources from their previous
hard-coded linkages, allowing them to be assembled and managed in
the most efficient and flexible way possible. Let’s take a closer
look.
Citrix In The Datacenter - XenServer
Server
virtualization, provided by Citrix XenServer, transforms the
datacenter from sprawling server farms into an energy-efficient
hub. By using one server to process multiple virtual machines (VMs)
handling different applications, companies can increase their
server utilization rates while running
far fewer servers. This cuts down on the power needed to operate,
cool and maintain equipment by as much as 75% and multiplies
efficiency ten-fold.
A typical scenario might involve those four email servers discussed
earlier. Let’s say that two are dedicated to operation and
another two toward redundancy – each running at only 10%
capacity. Instead, use XenServer to virtualize each machine and
then run two VMs on a single physical server, reducing the total
number of physical servers from four to two while increasing
capacity from 10% to 20%. Next, use XenServer to virtualize another
four servers, maybe for Oracle Financials, for example, and operate
these VMs on the physical servers running email. Now those original
two physical servers are each running four VMs and operating at 40%
capacity. If one server fails, the other physical machine, still
with 60% available capacity, can take over and handle the
additional workload.
Fewer physical servers operating at peak utilization translates
into less energy to power and cool equipment. XenServer also
enables you to quickly and easily deploy (and copy) a new server
– in under 10 minutes – in contrast to the manual work required
without virtualization. It’s easier to maintain, making it a
great green and overall IT solution.
For a free evaluation of XenServer visit our Web site at:
www.citrix.com/XenServer/try.
Citrix On The Desktop – XenApp and
XenDesktop
Citrix XenApp (the new name for Citrix
Presentation Server™) and XenDesktop leverage virtualization to
reduce the computing power needed on the desktop and to broaden
your options when purchasing new client devices, such as new low,
power alternatives. This has significant implications for both the
type of device used and its longevity.
With XenApp application virtualization, applications run
independent of the operating system, taking the actual computing
device out of the equation. Applications are delivered, not
installed, sending only what’s needed for interaction with the
application and diverting all the processing power back to the
datacenter for optimal energy efficiency.
XenDesktop, alternatively, connects to a session-based device, such
as a blade PC, making it easy to cycle remote desktops to make the
most of available power at the branch office. Keep in mind that
computing devices still draw a lot of power even in sleep or
standby mode. With XenDesktop, devices can be automatically powered
down when the office is closed, for example. User desktop sessions
still remain actively running on servers in the datacenter while
devices stand ready to power up during business hours.
Less powerful machines, like thin clients, can be used to run new
and even larger applications without harm to performance.
Additionally, these machines enjoy a longer life – from the
average two years to five or more – simply because they endure
less impact and typically have no moving parts. Longer life means
less equipment to purchase and dispose of, leading to less e-waste
and disposal costs and a greener organization.
Together, the sum is more (for less) than the parts.
Independently, XenServer, XenApp and XenDesktop work their magic
for green IT in the datacenter and on the desktop. However,
together they synergize to forge a comprehensive solution to
dramatically reduce your IT organization’s overall carbon
footprint.
With XenServer’s superb ability to consolidate servers and
maximize resource utilization, it only makes sense to concentrate
power in the datacenter. Use XenApp and XenDesktop to shift the
need for computing power away from the desktop and toward the
datacenter where it can be optimized for energy efficiency.
XenApp virtualizes applications and delivers them to desktops
running from XenServer VMs back at the datacenter or on
power-sufficient client devices – whichever provides the best
performance.
Meanwhile, XenDesktop minimizes the computing power needed at the
client device by centralizing the desktop into the datacenter and
using XenApp virtualization to remotely display the desktop to any
device – loaner laptops, thin clients, etc.
Ultimately, this synergy enables IT to provide the most efficient
and sustainable technology infrastructure regardless of desired
computing devices, performance demands or scalability
requirements.
For more information about XenServer, XenApp and XenDesktop visit
our Web site at:
www.citrix.com/greenIT.
Conclusion
Going green is good for business as well as the environment.
Soaring costs and dwindling energy supply are driving a new era of
green IT, in which the greatest challenge is to shrink power
consumption yet still support business scalability and performance.
Citrix virtualization delivers a true green IT solution, providing
a comprehensive approach to dramatically reducing your
organization’s overall footprint – from the datacenter to the
desktop. With Citrix, you’ll gain new levels of efficiency across
the entire organization, well beyond energy conservation, that will
resonate everywhere you do business.
