What IT pros like best about next-generation technology
Do hundreds of gallons of used vegetable oil belong anywhere near a data center, let alone inside? Phil Nail thinks so. Nail is CTO of AISO.Net, whose data center gets 100 percent of its electricity from solar energy. Now he's considering waste vegetable oil as an alternative to using diesel fuel in the Web hosting company's setup for storing solar-generated power.
"We're never opposed to trying something new," says Nail, who last year eliminated nearly 100 underutilized stand-alone servers in favor of four IBM System x3650 servers, partitioned into dozens of virtual machines using VMware software.
Server virtualization fits right into AISO.Net's environmentally friendly credo. The company increased its average server-utilization level by 50 percent while achieving a 60 percent reduction in power and cooling costs through its consolidation project.
