Although servers are the largest consumers of data-center power and cooling, the effect of storage and network gear shouldn't be downplayed, users say.

Tim Sander, vice president of IT at Applied Systems in University Park, Ill., last year deployed virtual tape library (VTL) appliances from Sepaton. He did so in part so he later wouldn't have to buy more power-guzzling storage.

Applied Systems originally selected Sepaton VTL appliances to get rid of media errors and having to write to tape, but it since has realized that the appliance's DeltaStor deduplication feature can save a lot of space. DeltaStor technology stores the most recent copy of data in full form and replaces older, redundant data with pointers, thus enabling fast recovery. Applied Systems has realized 80-to-1 duplication. "That gives us the ability to keep more data on disk without needing more spindles of storage," Sander says.

In addition, the Sepaton appliances substitute less expensive Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) for Fibre Channel disks. Because SATA disks operate more slowly than their Fibre Channel counterparts, they save energy.

Steve Hawkins, service architect for Orange, a mobile operator in the United Kingdom, says he found considerable power savings in his data center after installing business-intelligence appliances from Netezza. "By replacing a Sun Enterprise E10000 server, a large EMC disk array and a tape library with four Netezza appliances, we were able to reduce the footprint from about 24 floor tiles to nine floor tiles, for a substantial savings in power."

< Previous story: Five ways to cut back on data-center power consumption | Next story: Dim the lights and think about DC power >