With U.S. gas prices solidly topping the $4 per gallon price barrier, the automobile industry is taking a beating. Truck sales have slowed and conspiracy theories are circulating the Internet to explain the shortage of some hybrid car models (is it possible that they’ve simply sold all they produced?). High energy prices are impacting every aspect of the economy, and daily we hear new predictions of gloom and doom. At a minimum, reducing energy consumption – and expense – is on everyone’s mind. So what is the impact on IT infrastructure and specifically storage?
Currently, the lion’s share of attention related to energy savings among storage managers (if any is paid at all, that is) focuses on employing technologies such as thin provisioning and data de-duplication to improve utilization. Certainly, this is an important concern, but it only addresses one aspect of the problem. With power costs for storage likely to exceed $2 billion next year (see “Storage power costs to approach $2B this year, says IDC“), storage groups must also begin to consider the power and cooling impact of devices on the data center floor.
Traditionally, the only time questions about power and cooling entered into storage discussions was at the point of preparing for installation when such information was needed in order to ready the site. In fact, I cannot recall ever encountering a product selection process where energy consumption became a significant factor in product selection.
When it comes to designing and operating storage, the top priorities in most organizations typically center on factors like availability, recoverability, and performance followed closely by scalability and manageability. Energy impact is not even on the list. When was the last time a storage administrator argued tradeoffs of implementing a RAID 10 versus RAID 5 tier of storage from an energy consumption perspective?
However, the reality is that many data centers were not designed to accommodate the increased power and cooling demands of today’s high-density systems, and while many organizations are planning new data centers the time and cost to build and migrate are very high. Current estimates place power at about 5% of total IT budget for large organizations, but predictions are that this will double or triple of the next ten years. This means that every area of the data center will come under scrutiny.
As always, it’s best to start is by gaining some knowledge. Much has been written and discussed about data center design and the need to sync IT goals and objectives with those of facilities managers. Organizations like The Green Grid and the Uptime Institute offer a wealth of information. Likewise the Storage Networking Industry Association offers a useful tutorial on green issues related to storage.
If you’re responsible for managing storage, it’s a question of when, not if, you’ll be asked about improving storage energy efficiency. Better get ready.
Jim Damoulakis is chief technology officer of GlassHouse Technologies Inc. , a leading provider of independent storage services. He can be reached at jimd@glasshouse.com.
