Virtualization isn’t just a type of computer network support. It’s not just the newest imperative for business. It’s not just the best way to give your IT staff greater control over assets and more time to manage them. The experts at NCC Data, the premier provider of IT Services for Dallas-Fort Worth, can tell you that virtualization is all that and more —it’s green.

Let’s look at the big green picture first. Virtualization can reduce your company’s carbon footprint. Every server that’s virtualized eliminates four tons of CO2 —the equivalent to taking one and a half cars off the road. By virtualizing, you’re also using less energy—a lot less energy. For each server virtualized, you can save approximately 7000kWh of electricity a year. That’s nearly $700 in reduced power and cooling costs. It could be even more in the future: Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research organization, estimates that most enterprise data centers will soon spend as much on energy as they do on hardware infrastructure.
Just by considering reduced energy costs, you can see how your company may be able to save some green along with saving the planet.  Want to save even more? When you outsource your virtualization strategy to the computer network support professionals at NCC Data, you can:

• Reduce your capital investment. You don’t need to purchase or run the number of servers you’re using now.
• Save on hardware costs. Less servers mean less hardware, too.
• Increase hardware utilization rates from the typical 15% to as much as 80%.
• Save money on system maintenance.

Virtualization also frees your IT staff, enabling them to focus on proactive innovation instead of maintaining and managing existing infrastructure. In fact, virtualization and cloud computing topped the agenda for CIOs in 2011, according to a recent survey by Gartner.

As  the premier  provider of  IT Services for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, NCC Data can make your company’s grass greener by providing you with virtualization  of :

• Servers
• Operating Systems
• Applications
• Storage
• Database
• Network

Consider going virtual with the computer network support experts at NCC Data. You’ll get a boost from doing something good for the environment—and an extra boost to your budget.

NCC Data has partnered exclusively with Extreme Networks for all our data center switches. We chose Extreme Networks not only because of their high performance and scalability, but their moderate price point. The family of top-of-rack switches is a key element to Extreme Networks’ proprietary Four Pillars strategy for migrating from physical to virtual to cloud data centers, and to address the complexities created by virtualization and consolidation (as discussed previously on our blog). The solution allows data centers to migrate from a traditional physical network to a virtualized infrastructure and later to a cloud environment, while preserving tools, security appliances and policies – and without stranding precious network assets.

The #2 source for data center Top-of-Rack switches, behind Cisco Networks, Extreme Networks boasts the industry leading Summit(R) X650, Summit X450 and Summit X480 switches. Extreme Networks provides converged Ethernet network infrastructures that support data, voice and video for enterprises and service providers. The company’s network solutions feature high performance, scalable switching solutions that enable organizations to address real-world communications challenges and opportunities.

Extreme Networks also uses M-LAG or Multi-System Link Aggregation (M-LAG) as an alternative to Spanning Tree; a method for preventing network loops and for handling backup paths in the event of a failure, and TRILL- the method Cisco uses to make up for deficiencies in Spanning Tree. M-LAG eliminates the drawbacks of Spanning Tree while providing the benefits of TRILL, without disrupting the network or requiring significant capital expense or upgrades to the system, unlike Cisco’s. Extreme also offers all these strengths at a more competitive price point than Cisco.

NCC Data stands by its partnership with Extreme Networks to provide powerful data center switches to its customers at competitive prices.

If you’re running your own servers, you’re losing money. Have you considered server consolidation? Server consolidation means taking your group of servers, which typically run at only 15-20% capacity each, and reducing the number of servers through resource sharing to increase efficiency and eliminate redundancies. NCC Data can help you maximize ROI on your data center through this server consolidation process.

Consolidating your servers presents a new array of complex processes in data center management, though, so the most efficient way to manage this is through sever virtualization, which simplifies the data-sharing processes by hiding the more complex details to make server management easier for the average user. These two processes help streamline your IT needs and, while the upfront costs may be significant, the money saved by consolidating your server (not to mention the energy saved through this “green” process) make it a legitimate venture for your company.

Some facts and figures:

• A worldwide financial group used 52 servers in 2005 and through virtualization, is running on only 14 in 2010.
• A mid-sized New York law firm has ‘gone green’ through virtualization, reducing its electric consumption. At the same time, the firm has increased network uptime, simplified its disaster recovery backup process, and freed up IT staff to work on other projects. (Source: Network World)

NCC Data has the skills and professionals in place to seamlessly transition your servers to a consolidated system- call us at 972.354.1600 to discuss how we can help you consolidate your servers and cut your IT costs today!

Server virtualization is part of an overall trend in IT that includes storage virtualization, network virtualization, and workload management. This trend is one component in the development of autonomic computing, in which the server environment will be able to manage itself based on monitored activity. Server virtualization can be used to consolidate servers, make more efficient use of resources, improve availability, assist in disaster recovery. testing/development, and centralizing administration.

Server consolidation is one of the most compelling IT benefits to companies. A typical non-virtualized application server may reach just five to ten percent utilization. But a virtual server that hosts multiple virtual machines can easily reach fifty to eighty percent utilization. Server consolidation allows flexibility to migrate workloads between physical servers, moving workloads as-needed. A traditional server would be taken offline for maintenance or upgrades. With virtualization, though, the server’s consolidated workloads can be migrated to a spare server or distributed amongst other servers; subsequently, the original server can be shut down without any disruption to the workloads. Workloads from a failing server can likewise be moved over or restarted on other servers, minimizing the effect of hardware problems.

Virtualization is tremendously beneficial to data protection, and workloads consolidated with virtualization can easily be copied with periodic point-in-time snapshots or replicated to off-site storage systems with little of the performance penalty experienced with traditional tape backup systems. The net result is that more VMs can be hosted on fewer physical servers, translating into lower costs for hardware acquisition, maintenance, energy and cooling system usage.

NCC Data of Dallas – Ft. Worth has helped numerous businesses streamline their IT operations with server consolidations, asset management, and overall infrastructure optimization.  Call us at 972-354-1600 for an analysis that can be the first step in the absolute best efficiency for your business too.