Server Consolidation

What Does Server Consolidation Mean?

Server consolidation refers to the use of a physical server to accommodate one or more server applications or user instances. Server consolidation makes it possible to share a server’s compute resources among multiple applications and services simultaneously. It is mainly used to reduce the number of servers required in an organization.

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Techopedia Explains Server Consolidation

The primary objective behind server consolidation is to consume all of a server’s available resources and reduce the capital and operational expenses associated with multiple servers. Traditionally, only 15-30 percent of a physical server’s overall capacity is used. With server consolidation, the utilization rate can be increased to well over 80 percent. Server consolidation works on the principles of server virtualization, where one or more virtual servers resides on a physical server.

Server consolidation uses a multi-tenant architecture where all the installed and hosted virtual servers share a processor, storage, memory and other I/O and network processes. However, each virtual server has a separate operating system, applications and internal services.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…