Opposing Directives

It's fashionable and trendy to embrace concepts like "green" and "server virtualization", but the reality of business is bottom line. Add to that sweeping pork-adding mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and e-discovery burdens, datacenters in corporate America are not going to pare down -- the must do the opposite, or face the much larger and nastier specter of investigations, fines and law suits. To consider otherwise is often to choose to chop off their noses despite their faces.

SarbOx mandates that systems be redundant and rock-solid. Server virtualization is a step backward, reducing redundancy by putting multiple servers in the same physical box -- one component can fail and cause multiple systems to be dead in the water. Such a risk will not meet the SarbOx smell test. Virtualization is at best a work in progress, not for deployment in regulated production environments. Such servers usually run in a 24-hour-a-day environment with users accessing them constantly, an environment where "green" features such as reduced power modes will see very little actual use.

Equipment life cycle is also a consideration. Bought a server two years ago that's not quite so "green"? In most companies, it had better be in use at least another three years or the bean counters will scream bloody murder. Most companies will continue to demote and reallocate and reutilize a server until it is simply too low in capability to redeploy. Consider also the full environmental impact of manufacturing new equipment and disposal of existing equipment sooner than the established life-cycle. Does throwing away a perfectly serviceable server really serve to clean up the environment, or does the environment impact of new server production processes and the impact of discarded server materials in land fills render moot the marginal energy efficiency gains of manufacturing and deployment of a new server?

It's fine and dandy to play armchair quarterback, but you need to be standing on the sidelines to understand all that's involved in running a football team.

Click to read the article this is in response to.