Everyone seems to be looking for ways to be more green these days – hybrid cars, reusable grocery bags, etc
And those in IT are no exception. Traditional IT environments consume an incredible amount of energy resources, such as power and cooling. The key for organizations focused on moving towards a greener data center is to emphasize efficiency in energy consumption and efficiency in IT processes and systems. In other words, green IT needs to align to efficient IT.
The road to a greener data center is paved both by small, incremental changes as well as monumental technology shifts. Advancements in software often naturally lead to more energy efficient data centers. For example, hard drives are now built to consume less power than in the past, new server features help reduce superfluous cooling costs, and data optimization techniques, such as inline and at inception deduplication and compression, lead to efficiencies in processing, storage, and backup.
Hyperconvergence represents a major technology development capable of transforming the data center into a lean, green, efficiency machine. By converging all IT below the hypervisor, hyperconverged infrastructure immediately makes the data center more efficient and environmentally sound. The data center goes from as many as 12 disparate IT components to a single solution, so there is no longer a need to utilize storage space, power resources, or cooling functions on these IT components.
In fact, an IDC whitepaper found 75% of respondents realized an average of a 65% improvement in utilization of storage resources as a result of hyperconverged infrastructure. In addition, nearly half of surveyed customers realized a 47% reduction in cost of data center power and cooling expenses.
Though revolutionary, hyperconverged infrastructure is not a rip-and-replace technology, it can be introduced into existing environments as part of normal refresh cycles. For example, a hyperconverged solution can first be deployed in place of traditional data storage as a first step to modernizing a data center and can later replace additional IT components over time. This approach offers an opportunity to simplify the existing infrastructure and the complicated process of updating that infrastructure. Once standardized on a hyperconverged solution like HPE SimpliVity, IT teams would only have a single product to refresh instead of a variety of separate IT components – which helps explain why 26% of customers in that same IDC study cited the need for fewer tech refresh cycles.
Hyperconvergence has always been focused on simplifying and consolidating the data center. It’s no surprise that organizations looking to reduce their environmental footprint have discovered significant green opportunity in hyperconvergence. The benefits in space utilization and operational efficiency make it more than worthwhile to implement a hyperconverged solution and transform your data center into a lean, green, efficiency machine.
About Jesse St. Laurent
Jesse St. Laurent is the Chief Technologist for HPE Hyperconverged and SimpliVity. He uses his 20 years of experience to engage channel partners, evaluate emerging technologies, and shape innovative technology solutions involving data center modernization. For more information on how hyperconverged infrastructure can elevate your hybrid IT environment, download the free HPE SimpliVity edition of Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Dummies ebook.
