How VMware Hands-On Labs Uses Cross-Cloud Services to Reduce Energy Consumption

Jens Koegler Energy & Utilities

Originally posted on http://www.vmware.com by Simon Momber

If you had 4 days and 2,000 people that needed to try out VMware software, how would you provide enough cloud capacity to deliver over 5,000 lab experiences? 

The answer:  Multi-Cloud!

Over the last 10 years, VMware Hands-on Labs has relied on a combination of private and public clouds, known as Multi-Cloud, to deliver over 100,000 labs to tech savvy audiences.  Lab users expect zero downtime and high-performance, but that comes with a high cost in terms of energy.

VMware is committed to advancing sustainability, equity and trust by embedding ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) into everything we do.  So, it’s critical that Hands-on Labs has a deep visibility into energy use across its multi-cloud landscape. This is made possible thanks to VMware Aria Operations (formally VMware Operations Cloud) which is part of the VMware Cross-Cloud™ services portfolio.

VMware Cross-Cloud™ services is a portfolio of cloud services that deliver a unified and simplified way to build, operate, access, and secure any application on any cloud from any device.

VMware Aria Operations gives the Hands-on Labs  team several dashboards that lead to the right sustainability decisions. The goals of these dashboards include:

  • Green Supply. Increases productivity and carbon efficiency for multiple cloud operations.
  • Carbon Transparency. Enables transparency into carbon reduction across all available clouds.
  • Sustainable IT Infrastructure. Drives secure, resilient, and sustainable private and public cloud infrastructure.
  • Transition to Zero-Carbon. Catalyzes the transition to zero-carbon across multiple clouds.

Let’s take a look at the core capabilities you can drill down into within each dashboard, leading to their own view and set of metrics.

Green Score Dashboard: High-Level Metrics in VMware Aria Operations

Clean Demand Dashboard: Core Capabilities

  • Identifies VMs that have met the Powered Off VM criteria but still consume storage, which requires power.
  • Identifies VMs that have met the Idle VM criteria but still consume ESXi Host memory and storage, both of which require power.
  • Identifies snapshots, which are only meant to be temporary. They reside on storage infrastructure, which requires power.
  • Identifies oversized VMs, which reduce the compute and storage infrastructure’s ability from hosting more VMs.
  • Identifies idle VMs, which consume a small amount of power, but collectively add up over time.

Lean Operations Dashboard: Core Capabilities

  • Identifies underused storage. Technological advances enable more processing capabilities at the same or lower power requirements.  
  • Identifies oversized clusters. Showcases the carbon footprint reduction achieved with virtualization.

Green Supply Dashboard: Core Capabilities

  • Identifies small vSphere clusters. Clusters with lesser capacity require more hosts and consume more electricity.  
  • Identifies aging computer hardware that is running older versions of ESXi, which delivers lower virtualization efficiency.  
  • Identifies aging storage datastores that are running older versions of VMFS, which are less efficient and lead to high power consumption.

VMware Cross-Cloud™ services with VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to make better power-driven decisions when it comes to energy savings. The environmental impact of the Idle VMs dashboard shows what VMs are running idle and the cost savings that could be achieved by shutting them down, helping to improve data center efficiency. This can help businesses identify applications that may be used infrequently or not at all and can be safely shut down to save on energy costs until they are needed to run again. This dashboard could also be used to identify applications that may be more cost effectively run in a public cloud, balancing the cost of private cloud energy consumption with public cloud resource consumption.

See how VMware is building a more sustainable, equitable and secure future by integrating ESG goals across the company and aligning them with our core business strategy at https://www.vmware.com/company/esg.html

Learn more about Hands-on Labs at VMware Explore 2022 Europe: https://blogs.vmware.com/hol/2022/10/hands-on-labs-welcomes-you-back-to-explore-europe.html

Jens Koegler

Jens Koegler is VMware's Healthcare Industry Director in EMEA. He is helping our healthcare customers develop and run modern applications to drive innovation and ensure better patient care through a digital foundation that includes data center, hybrid cloud, mobile, networking and security technologies. VMware plays a strategic role in the healthcare industry. Its leading innovations in enterprise software help ensure consistent patient care and reduce IT access time for healthcare professionals so they can spend more time with their patients. Jens plays a key role in helping customers understand how new applications, devices, the latest IT technologies and digital transformation are driving innovation in healthcare.