It has been a while since I made an entry. I'll spare you the excuses. While I have been dormant on the blog front we continue to furiously work towards delivering key pieces of the xVM platform such as xVM Server and the next rev of xVM Ops Center this summer. Meanwhile, we recently put out version 1.6 of xVM VirtualBox - the high performance, small footprint, host-based hypervisor with support for Mac OS, Windows, Linux and Solaris. It has been getting some rave reviews. Jason Perlow's review on zdnet was especially cool. Check out whats new in xVM VirtualBox 1.6 here and download a copy for yourself here.
Speaking of dormant...have you checked out the economy lately? In addition to all the talk about recession, the news has been rife with coverage about rising gas prices and dropping SUV sales. Oil rose above $130 and consequently truck and SUV sales dropped about 17%. Cause and effect. I see the effects on the road myself. The Prius parade in the diamond lane is getting longer. I see a lot of small cars like the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit on the roads here in the Bay Area now.
On a related topic, I've been on the lookout for data that directly ties the recession and rising energy costs to recent datacenter spending trends. The anecdotal evidence is there but I'd like to see some current data that ties the two. I'm sure we'll see some soon. Meanwhile, I'll leave you some interesting data from an article worth reading from the Business Week a couple months ago titled - "It's Too Darn Hot -The huge cost of powering—and cooling—data centers has the tech industry scrambling for energy efficiency" :
- "The cost of power consumption by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2006, to $4.5 billion, and could double again by 2011, according to the U.S. government (EPA)."
- "The $4.5 billion spent in the U.S. in 2006 is the equivalent of the electric bills for 5.8 million U.S. households."
- "An efficient data center uses about 25% less electricity than a run-of-the-mill one. In a midsize facility, that could amount to $4.5 million a year in savings."
- "These days, for every $1 spent on computing equipment in data centers,an additional 50 cents is spent each year to power and cool them. About half of the energy is for air conditioning."
- "According to a January survey of its members by AFCOM, an association of data center managers, 88.5% of them described energy consumption as a serious or very serious concern, up from 36.1% five years ago."