Today's “Green T” may not be as Healthy as we Think (27-Aug-07)
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Full article: Today's “Green T” may not be as Healthy as we Think (27-Aug-07)
Marketing departments at many of the leading manufacturers have been spending more time on using mathematics to support the supposed green initiatives being touted than on making tangible and material engineering changes to the design of their solutions to realize true environmental benefits.
One of the most blatant examples of this practice is where a hardware manufacturer exploits increased disk drive densities and advertises that the new generation of their products are now suddenly dramatically more efficient per unit of storage. While this is an undisputable fact, it does not in fact address the root cause, which is the unmanaged explosion of data being stored.
The problem with using denser IT as an energy efficiency strategy is that companies are being asked to store more data, and for longer periods of time to comply with regulatory demands - so no matter what the storage technology, more data is being created and stored.
Many companies tackle this problem through software, by applying de-duplication, single-instance storage, or compression methods that result in an overall reduction in the amount of data stored. While these software solutions certainly achieve a more measurable and arguably more tangible result, these approaches also do not address the same root cause identified above – the unmanaged explosion of data being stored.
In order to really make a dent in reducing energy consumption, we must work with the creators of content and data. The effort towards data reduction and therefore less reliance on ever increasing storage capacities must be collaborative and universal.
This IDC analyst seems obsessed with data volumes as the cause of all IT-related environmental damage. For instance, 'The wide accessibility of free internet storage and content depots (such as social networks), which IDC forecasts will be a major driver of storage capacities, encourages individuals to generate more content and to leverage the availability of these free resources without much thought towards the collective environmental impact.'
Text of Article
Benjamin Woo August 27, 2007
There has been a very obvious focus on green technology (a.k.a., “Green T”). This is obviously a very necessary focus. So much so, that the Wall Street Journal recently dedicated an entire section to corporate strategies relating to energy efficiencies. Its lead story was entitled “Business goes on an energy diet.”
For the technology sector, however, and especially the storage market, going green has been somewhat of a shell game. Marketing departments at many of the leading manufacturers have been spending more time on using mathematics to support the supposed green initiatives being touted as opposed to making tangible and material engineering changes to the design of their solutions to realize true environmental benefits. One of the most blatant examples of this practice is where a hardware manufacturer exploits increased disk drive densities and advertises that the new generation of their products are now suddenly dramatically more efficient per unit of storage. While this is an undisputable fact, it does not in fact address the root cause, which is the unmanaged explosion of data being stored.
The problem with using denser IT as an energy efficiency strategy is that companies are being asked to store more data, and for longer periods of time to comply with regulatory demands - so no matter what the storage technology, more data is being created and stored. The wide accessibility of free internet storage and content depots (such as social networks), which IDC forecasts will be a major driver of storage capacities, encourages individuals to generate more content and to leverage the availability of these free resources without much thought towards the collective environmental impact. For most, if the available storage space is used up on one free webmail service, then another service under a different name or alias or a different provider is leveraged. The same applies for the available storage space on a social network operator. For some of these providers, in order to protect the brand equity they have built, they may employ advanced data protection techniques such as regular snapshot or replication methods – creating a multiplicity affect on the amount of data stored.
Many companies tackle this problem through software, by applying de-duplication, single-instance storage, or compression methods that result in an overall reduction in the amount of data stored. While these software solutions certainly achieve a more measurable and arguably more tangible result, these approaches also do not address the same root cause identified above – the unmanaged explosion of data being stored.
If hardware and software is insufficient, then how can we be more “green?” Well, like Kermit the Frog says, “it isn’t easy being green.” Energy efficiencies cannot and should not consist only of the miniaturization of components, increasing densities of either disk drives or servers in a rack. Nor can energy efficiencies only be had by the deployment of software or hardware after the fact, which actually uses more energy to fight the increase in energy utilization. (Let me quickly digress here: if you deploy one or more de-duplication appliances throughout an organization for the purposes of reducing the amount data stored, unless the reclaimed capacity is physically turned off and removed, the harsh reality is that, this capacity is simply an invitation to store more data. So in effect, not only did the initial consumption of energy not decrease, it actually increased by the number of de-duplication appliances deployed!) That said, we recognize that the acquisition rate of future physical storage could be reduced, thereby reducing the rate of bringing on additional energy-consuming hardware.
We note that various technology related solutions are available such as variable speed fans, intelligent disk drive spin-down technologies, water-cooling and datacenter wide power and cooling solutions. Unfortunately each of these technologies and solutions are also “after the fact” technologies and still do not address the growth of data being created that ultimately needs to be stored.
In order to really make a dent in reducing energy consumption, we must work with the creators of content and data. The effort towards data reduction and therefore less reliance on ever increasing storage capacities must be collaborative and universal. Every computer science student learns the concept of database normalization. Wikipedia defines this as “a technique … to minimize duplication of information.” Yet, software vendors cannot seem to agree on a normalized way of storing interchanged data. Why can’t the email with the 100 slide PowerPoint attachment from the Chairman of my company that goes to every employee be stored once, instead of being sent 1,000 times? Were computer networks not designed from conception to be a way of sharing data? There are certainly many email archiving programs that can consolidate these 1,000 files after the fact. But it goes back to the previous premise: more technology is purchased and energy spent to achieve this energy efficiency. The capacity is very likely to be consumed as quickly as it was reclaimed! Why not prevent the 1,000 copies in the first place?
In fact, what the IT industry calls "green" today, is really more of a cover-up than a real solution to the increasing consumption of energy within the storage infrastructure. Nevertheless, we can only hope that today's "Band-Aids" are interim steps to bona fide energy efficient solutions in the future. Alas! Today's "Green T" may not have as many of the desired health benefits as we might think.
- Source: [IDC]
