Microsoft currently operates approximately 450,000 servers. At the moment around 25% of these are virtualised and the company has set a target of 50% virtualisation for its server footprint. The firm has an average server utilisation rate of around 7%.

As is well known Microsoft is undergoing enormous changes with a data center build programme that includes mega scale data centers in Ireland and Chicago which the company will open when needed and at Quincy in Washington state and a recently completed data center in San Antonio, Texas. The firm said that compared with three years ago it has cut its data center power use in half. It is painting the roofs white and washing them four times a year, but knows its targets to cut power use will require more than that.  

In the company's existing data center estate (not its proposed fourth generation pod based infrastructure build out which is still on the drawing board) split between data centers for its own operations and the new software plus services delivery infrastructure there exists an ongoing virtualisation programme. Currently the company is kitting out its data centers with racks pre-loaded with servers and brought in on wheels and slotted into place. Around 80% of the new servers being deployed in its data centers will be virtualised to some degree, running Hyper V, Microsoft’s virtual machine engine. . 

For Microsoft, virtualisation is a big issue.

For Larry Orecklin, general manager for virtualisation server and tools at the firm, it is the only issue.

He believes that server virtualisation, in the form of Microsoft's Hyper V and not VMware's ESX holds the answer to cutting server power consumption in all data centers, big and small. 

Green Heart of Italy


Monte Vibiano, Umbria, Italy


Sitting in a field, attached to a winery in Umbria, in the centre of Italy, is an unusal place to be talking about virtualisation but Mr Orecklin looks comfortable with it, not unhappy though looking slightly surprised at the climate extremes he is experiencing, plucked as he was 24 hours previously from the cloud and rain of the north west coast of the US (average annual rainfall: 36 inches).
Although picturesque it is perhaps appropriate that Umbria be the setting for this Microsoft conference. While the glitteratti might prefer Tuscany for their holiday villas, Umbria, the “green heart” of Italy, is more argricultural, less showy, more earthy and more industrious.

We are guests of Monte Vibiano, a wine and olive oil producer which recently consolidated four servers to two using Hyper V. Wine production is not an IT intensive business. Like its software supplier Monte Vibiano is trying everything to cut greenhouse gas emissions - even, like Microsoft does with its data centers - painting roofs to reflect the sunshine and cut the need for cooling.

“We are not the biggest company in the world doing the largest consolidation but our virtualisation efforts are part of what we believe in, which is that what happens in small companies will drive the greening of IT,” says Lorenzo Fasolo Bologna, CEO of the company and the man behind 360oGreen, an effort to make its olive oil and wine production (180,00 litres per year) carbon neutral. The company went back into wine production in 1989 having been a tobacco producer.  Mr Orecklin is impressed with the winemaker's passion for his profession and his produce and says so on at least two occasions. Mr Fasolo Bologna is a CEO, not an IT professional.

Management is key

Mr Orecklin believes virtualisation is a key element of data center energy reduction and that virtualisation management is key to efficient operations. He sees virtualisation as the basis for sustainable computing in these days when we all need to cut data center power use. "Energy costs will typically be 50% or more of the total IT budget for a data center," he says. 

He won’t comment on his Microsoft colleague Christian Belady’s call for server makers to raise the operating temperatures of their products. He is not aware of it and does not feel qualified to comment. Hardware is not his field. He is more comfortable when talking about how many downloads of Hyper V (over one million) there have been in the last 12 months – impressive enough – though it is a free dowload and in discussing how the next release of Hyper V will be tied into Windows Server when Microsoft will announce enhancements to its offering which it says will put it ahead of Vmware in functionality.

“We want to make virtualisation a feature of the operating system, not a feature trying to become an operating system itself which is what others are trying to do.” He sees no issue with tying Hyper V into the operating system, which will effectively offer for free what Vmware is charging for.

But here, we can perhaps define how Microsoft's virtualisation strategy is taking shape at least for the lower end of the market. As VMware goes for the big ticket operators and the mid to mega data center server consolidation deployments it will tie Hyper V into the Windows server operating system. Vmware's ESX does have a reputation for being expensive, though VMware denies this.

That is not to say that Microsoft will give Vmware a  free run at the big data center market.

There isn't a great deal to say about a project where four servers are consolidated to two but small businesses are a key market. And if smaller firms are to deploy virtualisation they are more likely to experience it as a Microsoft feature than as a stand alone paid for product. Mr Orecklin says he does not expect any calls from any regulators.


Virtualisation is, by Microsoft’s definition: "The isolation of one computing resource from another."
There are four views of virtualisation in Microsoft: Presentation virtualisation – (Terminal Services, presentation layer is separate from the process); Desktop virtualisation (Vista centralised enterprise desktop); Application Virtualisation (any application on any computer on demand); Windows Server (OS can be assigned to any desktop or server). 

The company has a dedicated web site www.hyper-green.com which hosts a virtualisation energy saving calculator. You decide on a consolidation number and its calculates how many KWHs you can save in a year. Looks simple but nothing ever is.


Microsoft says its green data center and recycling efforts include:
Data centers consume 50% less energy than 3 years ago
Digital By Choice – reduced disks shipped by 10 million units
Microsoft recycles an average of 208 tons of material each month
Maximize Use of Renewable Resources 100% renewable hydropower in Quincy Data Center
Mountain View, CA campus generates 480 kilowatts from 2,288 solar panels
Microsoft UK purchases 100% renewable electricity
San Antonio data center leverages recycled water program and uses wind power as primary energy source
Optimize Buildings and New Construction Build using LEED standards – consumes over 20% less energy
Dublin data center leverages the outside air as primary source to cool facility and is projected to be 50% more efficient (than a typical data center)

Larry Orecklin: Microsoft's Virtualisation Man

When asked for a comment on why Vmware would buy 5% of colocation company Terremark, Mr Orecklin weighs his answer, “You’d have to ask them,” he says. “I don’t comment on our acquisitions and I’m not commenting on theirs.” Similarly when asked what he thinks his old Oracle boss Larry Ellison will do with Sun Microsystems, he says: “Things are getting interesting.” 

Mr Orecklin is a Silicon Valley man who has moved north to Seattle. His previous stints at include VP of marketing at Oracle, a senior role at Tivoli, a VP of storage at Quantum. He moved up to Seattle from Austin, Texas and is no stranger to warmer climes. Microsoft, he says, is an interesting place to work.

Mr Orecklin joined Microsoft in April 2006 as the general manager of System Center Marketing for the Windows and Enterprise Management Division. Before that he was CEO at Hire.com, a company that sold human resource software into the Peoplesoft market prior to that company’s acquisition by Oracle.