Green Storage: Energy Savings Without Performance Compromises

The advent of cheaper and cheaper compute power has brought with it a tremendous growth in data storage to feed these computers and provide the information organizations need. Until recently, energy efficiency of servers and storage has been less of a concern to IT organizations however this is changing especially as the price of electricity has increased and demand is outpacing the supply of electricity generation and transmission (G&T).

The combination of growing demand for electricity by data centers, density of power usage per square foot, rising energy costs, strained electricity G&T infrastructure and environmental awareness prompted the passage of United States public law 109-431 in 2006. Public law 109-431 instructed the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), part of the Department of Energy (DoE), to report to Congress on the state of IT data centers energy usage in the United States.

In the August 2007 EPA report¹ to Congress, findings included that IT data centers or what is being termed information factories consumed about 61 billion kilowatt hours (kWh²) of electricity in 2006 at an approximate cost of about $4.5 billion dollars. Also reported is that IT data centers on average consume 15-20 times or more energy per square foot than compared to a typical office building. Without changes in electricity consumption and improved efficiency, the EPA is estimating that IT data centers power consumption will exceed 100 billion kWh by 2011 further stressing an already strained electrical power G&T infrastructure and increasing previously high energy prices.

While there is a growing environmental impact awareness ("The Greening if IT"), the StorageIO Group, through research and regular discussions with IT personal, has found the more pressing problem facing many IT data centers (approximately 85-90%) are growing bottlenecks and approaching ceilings on available power, cooling and floor space. As IT data centers address their power, cooling and floor space challenges with improved energy efficiency and effectiveness, three main benefits will be realized: helping the environment, reduce power and cooling costs, and enabling sustained application growth to support evolving business information needs.