Saving Energy Through Storage and Server Virtualization

Executive Summary

Overview
AISO, a website hosting provider based in Southern California, built an award-winning solar-powered data center in 2005, attracting many eco-conscious customers. To wring maximum efficiency from its on-site electrical generating capacity,AISO in 2006 moved from physical servers with direct-attached storage to virtual servers and virtualized NetApp storage. Since then,AISO’s business grew substantially and its storage capacity tripled with no increase in information technology (IT) staff and no additional solar panels. In 2008, it began using virtual desktops in its own office and now offers that service to its customers.

Barriers
AISO overcame several barriers on the way to becoming an eco-friendly website hosting company with healthy growth. Legacy systems were not energy efficient, which made it increasingly difficult for AISO to operate off the power grid while growing the business. Provisioning these servers was also time consuming and labor intensive, making growth costly. Physical servers were inefficient in their use of storage, which wasted resources; they also generated a lot of heat, adding to cooling costs. A large number of physical servers meant more opportunities for hardware failure, which had the potential to damage AISO’s reputation for reliability and outstanding customer service.

The Solution
To address these barriers,AISO virtualized its entire hosting operation. The company settled on VMware ESX technology for virtualization, IBM System x server hardware, and NetApp FAS270 storage hardware. The company later migrated to IBM Blade servers and added NetApp FAS3070 storage. NetApp FlexClone software and FlexVol and SnapRestore technologies were deployed to improve provisioning speed and flexibility, protect data, and simplify IT operations.

Benefits
Virtualization and NetApp solutions are projected to help AISO achieve more than $4.6 million in business value from October 2006 through December 2010. A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEITM) analysis by Alchemy Group identified business value, both realized and projected, in the following five areas:

• Energy Expense Avoidance Attributable to Storage and Server Virtualization: Energy savings valued at $1,888,446 due to the energy efficiency of virtual servers and storage
• Storage and Server Virtualization Provisioning and Hardware Savings: Hardware savings and related labor costs worth $1,083,455 with the switch to virtualization technology
• Deduplication and Thin Provisioning Storage Cost Avoidance: Storagecost avoidance totaling $948,600 due to use of NetApp deduplication and Thin Provisioning technologies
• Data Backup and Recovery Labor Savings: Labor savings of $670,072 with virtualization, which allowed AISO to maintain a lean IT staff
• Tape Backup Labor and Materials Cost Avoidance: Labor and material cost avoidance totaling $29,611 by replacing tape backup with NetApp Snapshots and preventing the purchase of tape drives, media, and labor