I’ve received a few emails asking why I’ve been posting about environmental issues over the past week.

The first reason should be pretty obvious, because I’m concerned about what we’ve done to the environment. I think that we’ve got to make some changes before it’s too late.

The other reason is that virtualization can have a very positive impact on the environment. I’ve been in a lot of data centers where they are maxed out on electrical capacity. When their data center was designed, nobody could possibly predict the enormous growth that would occur. Virtualization allow companies to grow their data center without incurring the same costs as a traditional physical environment. A big part of those costs is in HVAC and kWh. Virtualization takes advantage of a very simple fact, reducing the # of servers in your data center means fewer BTU’s and fewer kWh consumed.

The environmental impact of this is, the fewer kWh consumed, the fewer that need to be generated. The fewer kWh generated means fewer pollutant released by coal or gas burning power plants.