NY hospital cuts power bill with thin-client virtualization

Saint Vincent's has virtualized more than 600 desktops so far, said Chris Hansen, the system architect for the hospital network. Eventually, it will replace all 5,000 desktop PCs with thin-client devices.

Pano Logic supplies the thin clients. The OSes -- all Windows XP at present -- are streamed from a VMware ESX virtualization platform.

By using thin clients rather than full-featured PCs, the hospital system could save US$170,000 a year in electricity costs, Hansen estimated. Although additional power would be consumed by the servers to run the virtualized OSes, and by the storage arrays to house user data, running 600 thin clients would still consume only a quarter of the power required to run 600 desktop computers, he said.

The hospital is conducting operational tests to get an even better estimate of the power savings.

While server virtualization is all but mainstream by now, desktop virtualization has remained on the fringe of corporate IT for several years. Analysts are optimistic that it may become more widely adopted in the year to come, thanks to pressures from thinner budgets, soaring electricity bills and the growing complexities of desktop client management. If so, Saint Vincent's is on the cutting edge of this trend.