Implementation of Server Consolidation Method on a Data Center by using Virtualization Technique: A Case Study

Data center is a place where data and applications placed and run. Those data and applications saved various server based on function of application run such as server of database, proxy, portal, website, application, mikrotic and so on. The more vary application run, the more server types needed. There are several implications when data center encounter “server flood”, including more electrical energy must be provided. In addition to the relationship between energy and the utilization rate is still low, there is still one problem faced by system administrators with the number of servers in the data center, the more the server to be maintained. The maintenance requirement is usually done as a result of periodic maintenance, hardware upgrades, system upgrades and hardware damage. The maintenance process requires a fairly long time, starts from new server preparation, application and system preparation, and also on the network side. The solution that can be done to solve this situation is by using virtualization (VM) of the servers. After several processes, such as categorization process, consolidation, design and implementation, the results made are by using VM terms of energy consumption, it can provide a savings of more than 50%. We conduct the virtualization concept on Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta (UIN Jakarta) as our case study. Before VM applied, the consumption of energy used is equal to 7855 watts, whereas after VM applied energy consumption will be 3890 watts. Efficient data center management can be applied and can save time for maintenance. Before the use of the VM, the time required to process improvement at least 3 hours, but after the use of VM takes just less than 1 hour.