Virtualization And Cloud Computing: Optimized Power, Cooling, And Management Maximizes Benefits

By Suzanne Niles and Patrick Donovan

Without question, IT virtualization - the abstraction of physical network, server, and storage resources - has greatly increased the ability to utilize and scale compute power. Indeed, virtualization has become the very technology engine behind cloud computing itself. While the benefits of this technology and service delivery model are well known, understood, and increasingly being taken advantage of, their effects on the data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) are less understood. The purpose of this paper is to describe these effects while offering possible solutions or methods for dealing with them.