Converged Architecture and Server Consolidation

Generally speaking, the cost of maintaining a higher number of individual hardware chassis exceeds the cost of maintaining a lower number of individual hardware chassis. Among other things, there is the cost of allocating space within the data center to a particular hardware chassis, as well as power consumption and cooling requirements. There are also costs involved in maintaining the hardware chassis and its components. Organizations are always looking for new ways to reduce their overall expenditure on hardware by using existing systems as efficiently as possible. This means making the most of every megabyte of RAM and every spare processor cycle, rather than having that hardware sit idle. For example, a server that on average uses 60% of its available RAM and processor capacity isn’t being used as efficiently as a server that on average uses 80% of its available RAM and processor capacity.