VMware president Diane Greene says the company is planning to expand the rebate program that was recently rolled out by California utility PG&E, which offers financial incentives of up to $4 million per site for companies that use virtualization in data center consolidations. "Several other power companies are looking to do the same," Greene told ZDNet's Larry Dignan. An excerpt:
Greene indicated that power is becoming one of VMware's larger selling points. She says that VMware's lab is testing ways to move load and consolidate server workloads so they can shut down at night. These servers would then automatically start up again when needed. Under this scenario, you may use 100 servers during business hours and consolidate them down to 50 at night when you need less computing power.
Sounds like a twist on Hewlett-Packard's dynamic cooling and lights-out data center management. The market for tools offering granular management of data center power and cooling is getting more interesting every day.
