There are two types of green weighing on the minds of business professionals these days: The green that denotes business practices that tread lightly on the environment, and the green that represents money – or lack thereof for capital improvements. The big question is, can you implement the former type of green without spending too much of the latter?

Apparently, you can. At least, so says a recent report written by Barb Goldworm, a virtualization analyst for Focus Consulting and co-author of the 2007 book, “Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs.” In the white paper titled “How to Green Your Data Center from the Server Out,” Goldworm and her co-authors Armando Acosta of Dell and Ed Kurtzer of Intel set out with the premise that the greening of data centers is not only desirable – it’s inevitable.

“Energy costs are going up dramatically. In fact, energy costs are surpassing hardware costs,” according to the report.  An accompanying chart tells the story in graphic detail, showing clearly how energy remained relatively low throughout the 90s and well into the current decade. However, in 2008, energy prices suddenly shot up, quickly crossing over the stable line representing server costs. For the first time, “We are spending more money on power and cooling for the servers than we are for the servers themselves,” the authors state.

As an example, consider a 1,000 square foot data center, which can hold 30 10kW racks. The power required to operate that infrastructure is about 300kW, with another 300kW required for cooling. In Goldworm’s estimates, that translates to an electric bill of $240,000 annually for cooling alone. This explains why, in a survey at last year’s Interop conference , 74% of the IT professionals polled said their company’s major motivation for adopting energy-conserving “green IT” practices is cost reduction. 

Goldworm advocates implementing measures such as power management, upgrading to more efficient UPS, and replacing legacy servers with new energy-efficient models. But she also goes one better, suggesting that server virtualization can significantly reduce power consumption by increasing hardware utilization, and eliminating under-utilized hardware.  In her consulting practice, Goldworm says she “sees an average of 10:1 consolidation ratios in virtualization. Virtualization reduces space use, power consumption, waste, and cooling needs.”

Blade servers, in particular, offer substantial energy savings, the report notes, by reducing the overall number of electronic components that require power and cooling, and by adding more flexibility in server load balancing, providing the ability to incrementally power down servers during periods of low utilization, such as at night.

Through savings such as these, the move to virtualization and other energy-efficient IT practices can actually become self-funding, according to the authors. However, there is a cautionary note: The savings in energy costs are usually directed at the facilities budget. IT managers may find it challenging to pinpoint the cost savings derived from their green initiatives, and to get those savings credited back to their own IT budgets. The authors suggest that IT departments should seek to a partner with their facilities counterparts at the very outset of any green IT initiative. “Then the savings on the facility side can help fund the move to green IT, including virtualization and consolidation efforts on blades.”