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Is Green Data Storage for Real?

Opinions vary, but some green data storage advocates favor solid state disks, “not because SSD is so efficient as the SSD manufacturers would have you believe, but because it enables really effective automated tiering.” Read on for more details about green storage. With rising concerns about energy costs and CO2 emissions, energy use in IT […]

Written By

Alan Earls

Sep 30, 2010

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Opinions vary, but some green data storage advocates favor solid state disks, “not because SSD is so efficient as the SSD manufacturers would have you believe, but because it enables really effective automated tiering.” Read on for more details about green storage.

With rising concerns about energy costs and CO2 emissions, energy use in IT organizations is under growing scrutiny. According to a 2007 Gartner report, the information and communications technology (ICT) industries produce 2 percent of global CO2 emissions – on a par with the aviation industry!

Data storage, which has been seeing double-digit capacity growth for years, is an important factor in that equation. With such concerns in mind, three years ago The Green Grid – a consortium of IT vendors and end users – embarked on a high-profile quest to make IT more energy efficient. The results of that endeavor and of parallel efforts in government haven’t been spectacular, however, leaders and analysts say the groundwork is being laid for substantial long-term performance improvements, primarily through establishing what to measure and how.

In April, The Green Grid announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Save Now and Federal Energy Management Programs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR Program, the European Union Code of Conduct, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s (METI) Green IT Initiative, and Japan’s Green IT Promotion Council (GIPC) regarding “guiding principles of data center energy efficiency metrics.” All the parties have adopted the idea of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as the preferred energy efficiency metric.

Read the rest at Enterprise Storage Forum.