Server Consolidation and the Combinatorial Effects of Multi-Core Processing, Virtualization, and Grid Technologies

Overview

Information Technology (IT) is a fast moving target, constantly pushing the limits of human creativity in developing innovative solutions to meet user demands. But never has IT faced as radical an evolution as the one underway. Through the combined use of Grid, Virtualization and Multi-core technologies everyone is witnessing unprecedented levels of scalability, flexibility, price-performance and manageability. These three technologies form that are define in this paper as a 'Three tier consolidation platform'. That is, each technology is view as a consolidation mechanism operating on a distinct level. Furthermore, the usefulness of each consolidation tier taken independently is limited, while combining all tiers at once holds huge potential. The sum can be greater than the parts!