Intel Case Study Sample

Solvay team consolidated 65 physical servers down to 17 servers using VMware virtualization software on Intel technology–based servers, hosting an average of 12 virtual machines per server. The team also added 102 virtual machines, for a total of 150 virtual machines running on 10 VMware ESX Server hosts. The team subsequently tested the 4-socket HP ProLiant DL580 server with the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series, and expects to fit 20 to 25 virtual machines on each of those servers.

“The Intel Xeon processors gave us the power to virtualize our environment and eliminate server sprawl,” says McMillan. “The server consolidation, together with the energy efficiency of the Intel processors, helped us put more processing capacity in our data center while reducing overall energy requirements. We estimate annual power and cooling cost savings of more than USD 67,000.”

Because configuring a virtual machine to run an application is fast and easy, McMillan’s team can now deploy new applications in 10 minutes instead of a week. “We still meet regulations by providing an individual virtual server for each application,” explains McMillan. “But now they can reside on the same piece of hardware, which greatly reduces our paperwork.”