Every virtual server saves $360 / year for electricity and cooling

From the company management blog, The Console, Bogomil Balkansky, Director of Product Marketing at VMware, talks about a rarely discussed benefit of virtualization, power saving, and provides some interesting numbers:

We estimate conservatively that for every workload moved from a physical to virtual environment, customers can save about $290 in electricity costs, and about $360 a year in cooling costs. The more important thing is that these savings accrue year after year.

Beside the company bottom line effect, there is something to be said about the environmental impact of virtualization. The $650 per virtualized workload represents 8,000 kWh of electricity saved. With more than 1 million workloads running in VMware virtual machines, the aggregate power savings are about 8 billion kWh, which is more than the heating, ventilation, and cooling electricity consumed in New England in a year…

Read the whole article at source.