Virtualisation software company VMware has opened a new ‘green IT datacentre’ in East Wenatchee, Washington, which the company says is designed and build-out with best practices to create an energy-efficient facility that maximises the use of VMware virtualisation software.
VMware expects to attain return on investment (ROI) on its next-generation datacentre investment through, $4m each year in energy and $1m each year in location consolidation costs for a total of $5m savings per year; deployment of virtualisation with 100% clean, renewable energy; and 70% savings in power and equipment, due to air-side economisation, a practice of using free outside air to cool the facility.
The company said that the new datacentre will support its internal IT department, as well as become a testing ground for its R&D group to develop and deliver new products to market. It targeted Power Utilisation Rate (PUE) of between 1.2-1.5, below the industry of 2-2.4.
According to VMware, the new facility employed technology designed to enable datacentres to run more efficiently, including, Hydroelectric power, which is expected to save the company approximately 50% in power rates; Economiser strategy to enable free air cooling, producing energy and cost savings; and Containment methodology to deliver energy and reduce costs.
VMware has deployed its virtualisaiton platform vSphere 4 to run business critical applications, provide control over application service levels and to reduce expenses and ensure business and preserve customer choice of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting while also reducing equipment, power, cooling and real estate costs.
Mark Thiele, director of business operations R&D at VMware, said: “This facility was designed with the idea that your datacentre is a system and every element of the design has potential impact on other elements. We also wanted to ensure the datacentre was a design that would be efficient, environmentally friendly, and virtually any company could build with an expectation of a positive return on the investment.”
