Lean and Green (Sep-07)
From Lauraibm
MI Summary
Full article: Lean and Green (Sep-07)
Energy bills can be significantly lowered by cutting storage’s power consumption; in addition to this making more efficient use of storage space can lead to a lower spend on storage in the long run.
In Asia “green storage” has not reached the same level of pervasiveness as in North America and Europe. However, Asian companies have been seen to move towards this area, and there is a common thought by most Asian IT shops that adopting more environmentally friendly storage solutions makes good business sense.
It is thought that for enterprises to go truly green there is a need to make an investment into management as well as into a less power hungry infrastructure; hence IT managers need to develop an information lifecycle management strategy.
Text of Article
New technologies promise energy-efficient storage without sacrificing performance.
By Cara Garretson and Jonathan Hopfner Computerworld Malaysia
In a perfect world, you could easily rein in the rapidly increasing amount of power that storage systems consume just by telling users to stop stockpiling data. In the real world, you’d lose your job for suggesting that.
Fortunately, you have a few more realistic options. Storage isn’t the biggest energy hog in the data centre, but cutting storage’s power consumption can lower the energy bill significantly. In addition, saving power by using storage space more efficiently can cut down on wasted capacity, which means spending less on storage in the long run.
The “greening” of storage also fits in to the growing trend of enterprises trying to reduce their environmental footprints, though vendors say this tends to be a less celebrated cause in Asia.
Explained David Foo, director of the StorageWorks division at HP Southeast Asia: “In Asia Pacific, there certainly is a growing awareness of environmental issues that need to be addressed by various sectors, from the government to businesses to individual consumers.
“However, the stronger motivation for most Asian businesses may be coming from the more pragmatic point of view rather than the ‘save the earth’ theme.”
Ong Chee Beng, director of the storage practice at Sun Microsystems Asia South, agreed. “(Green storage) has not reached the same level of pervasiveness here as in North America or Europe. However, we’re happy to see some customers putting ‘green storage’ as a mandatory requirement in their tender specifications—we think it’s a step in the right direction.”
Deb Dutta, Brocade’s vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan, said the vendor has seen a “relatively high adoption rate” regionally for its 48000 Director, which boasts one of the industry’s lowest power draw rates. He expects uptake to increase as governments urge businesses and people to take a serious view of climate change and energy demand issues.
In the end, most Asian IT shops are likely to see adopting more environmentally-friendly storage solutions makes good business sense. “IT managers need to be educated that while there may be increased short-term costs associated with selecting greener data centre technology, these are outweighed by the longer-term performance and environmental benefits,” said Darric Hor, general manager, Singapore, for Symantec.
Symantec sells software that can help businesses cut storage energy consumption by up to 50 per cent.
To reduce the energy consumed by data storage, an enterprise must stop thinking of storage as a potentially endless resource. Then it will seek new ways to use fewer, more efficient systems, one analyst said.
“Consolidate. Instead of having two storage arrays, could I do that work with one array, but increase the performance and reduce the response time to make end users happy, plus use less power?” asked Greg Schulz, founder of analysis firm StorageIO Group.
Well-established storage players, including Dell, EMC, HP and IBM are tackling the power-consumption problem, too, but the start-ups are behind the innovation in this area, Shulz said.
The bigger players are getting their product stories lined up, directing customers toward consolidation and a new approach to energy efficiency.
HP, for example, recently released the new “green” version of its disk arrays that according to Foo can improve power efficiency for users by up to 45 per cent.
Sanjeev Magotra, brand executive at IBM System Storage ASEAN, said Big Blue planned to invest about US$1 billion (RM3.5 billion) a year to bring more energy efficiency to IT through products and services.
Par Botes, chief technology officer for EMC Asia Pacific and Japan, said enterprises looking to go truly green would need to invest in management as well as less power-hungry infrastructure.
“To conserve power means optimising your entire infrastructure. IT managers need to develop an information lifecycle management strategy.
“While this is designed to help companies to get more value from their data, it also helps them increase utilisation, conserve power, and cut costs,” he explained.
- Source: ComputerWorld
