In order to reduce the energy consumption of large-scale data centers, a new virtual machine deployment algorithm, three threshold energy saving algorithm (VMD_TES), is proposed. Through analysing the linear relationship between the resource utilization ratio and energy consumption, the proposed algorithm transfers virtual machines from the over-loaded and under-loaded host computers to the moderate loaded ones. Then, on the basis of VMD_TES, four types of virtual machine selection strategies are designed, and the lowest potential growth strategy is chosen as the best strategy as a result of experimental comparison. Simulation results show that the HLGP method can greatly reduce the energy consumption of data centers, so that the service quality is kept at a higher level than the single threshold algorithm and the dual threshold algorithm.