Quad-core provides the ideal virtualization platform

Virtualization has become a mainstream technology that offers cost, performance, and manageability advantages to mainstream computing environments. Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processors 5300 series and 7300 series use Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)± to help improve virtualization efficiency and allow guest operating systems to run directly on the hardware without modification.

• Explore virtualization benefits and calculate ROI

Intel VT paves the way for substantial cost savings

Virtualization on Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors provides substantial total cost of ownership advantages over its predecessors. A study conducted by Intel's internal IT organization demonstrated up to a 30 percent cost reduction using the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series for virtualization, as compared to the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 5100 series.

Higher consolidation ratios let organizations buy fewer servers, reducing acquisition costs and improving utilization of each server. That benefit compounds the savings in utility bills for power and cooling, as well as cost avoidance for data center construction.

Quad-core performance helps get the most out of virtualization

The performance headroom offered by Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors enables high consolidation ratios when moving workloads from multiple servers to virtual machines. At the same time that Intel IT demonstrated capital and operating cost reductions, it also showed a 1.6x performance improvement in the virtualized quad-core environment, relative to using dual-core processors.

• Read IT@Intel's virtualization brief (PDF 187 KB)

In Intel IT tests, a server based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series demonstrated scalable, predictable performance with up to 32 virtualized server workloads. The results show the strong potential of the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series for high levels of consolidation in busy enterprise data centers.

• Read IT@Intel brief: Scaleable Performance for Server Consolidation (PDF 207 KB)

Intel VT hardware assist improves virtualization performance on Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors by reducing the need for the server to perform compute-intensive software-based translations between the guest and host operating systems. Because the processor spends fewer resources on that type of translation, overall system performance is increased.

Intel VT simplifies your server environment, making it easier to manage

The high consolidation ratios that are made possible by Intel VT and quad-core performance can mean fewer servers to manage in your environment. Because a large number of virtualized resources can reside on a single server, you can manage them as a single unit. The simplified managed environment is easier to support, reducing the burden on IT.