Business Value in Virtualization

How consolidation on top-end/multiprocessor Intel® Xeon® processor-based platforms leads to an overall reduced administrative and operational TCO.

Executive Summary

You’ve already decided that deploying Intel® based server virtualization is the most cost-effective consolidation pathway for your organization’s data center. You may think that using low cost entry servers for virtualization is the best way to save money and improve ROI but you woul be mistaken! In order to achieve the maximum benefit of this approach, it is important to examine how much additional cost-savings you will gain by choosing the higher-end performance processors and 4-way or larger SMP servers. By giving you the ability to more densely pack virtual machines on a single physical server, higher-end processors and larger SMP platforms give you the optimal benefits providing the best power efficiency, the highest density and more cost efficient virtualization and consolidation solutions.

When choosing the most cost-effective server platform for consolidating through virtualization, a top-end dual-processor will save you as much as 32 percent per server instance over an equivalent entry-level server! For example, it costs $7,600 for a top-end entry-level dual-process server versus $5,100 for an entry-level dual-processor, a 49% cost increases yet you could run more than twice as many virtual machines on the former.

Savings through virtualization are more apparent when considering an operation’s cost over three years. For example, it costs $78,487 for a top-end 4-way fully loaded server versus $55,018 for an entry-level equivalent server. However, higher-end processors offer the most cost-effective choice, with a savings of 77 percent per server instance over three year’s time.

In addition the top-end dual core based processors provide significantly better power efficiency for consolidated environments providing 23-70% improved power savings. This is a critical purchase decision factor for data centers constrained by power and cooling limitations as the cost of addig additional data center space or power/cooling often dwarfs the server hardware costs.