Lim Cheng Chaun Australia manager for Tandbery exclusively speaks to CRN.
The budget/resource dilemma
Budgets across small and medium-sized businesses are under increased scrutiny and restraint.
Overall, operational expenses, total cost of ownership and return on investment drive budget planning and spending. Nowhere has this become more acute than in IT departments.
According to IDC, for every dollar spent on computer hardware an additional 50 cents is spent on energy. Within the next four years that number will rise by 54 percent.
Analyst firm Gartner predicts energy costs will soon consume up to one-third of IT budgets. German newspaper Die Zeit reports that a single Google search request consumes as much energy per hour as an energy-saving lamp.
What's more, according to Simon Mingay of Gartner, IT equipment worldwide is responsible for 2 percent of CO2 emissions, which corresponds to the amounts of CO2 emitted by aircraft.
Data and energy
Companies battling rising energy costs face a growing torrent of data.
The more digital content, the more storage capacity they need. Likewise the physical size of the data centre.
As well, companies need 24/7 access to large amounts of data, as compliance regulations extend the retention periods for documents and information that must be retained.
And, there is a growing awareness of backup needs as part of an overall business continuity or disaster recovery plan.
Attention to data storage accumulates costs, as companies consume more power.
Data centres are filled with active servers with spinning disk drives which consume energy and generate heat which then must be cooled.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, energy consumption by corporate data centres doubled between 2000 and 2006. In 2006, data centres accounted for 1.5 percent of electricity use in the US and that number may double within three years.
The EPA also forecasts that power failures and brownouts will affect more than 90 percent of US data centres, while half of all larger data centres will lack the power and cooling capabilities to run high-density equipment.
The EPA predicts half of the world's data centres will become obsolete because of power and space restrictions.
Efficient data centres will reduce operating costs from power utilisation and capital expenditure by slowing or even eliminating data centre equipment purchases.
According to IDC, for every server removed from the data centre, approximately 11.4 tons of CO2 emissions are eliminated.
By adopting existing energy-saving techniques, the EPA estimates data centres could cut energy use nearly in half, potentially saving US$14 billion by 2011.
The "eco" economics
Green storage is more of a dollar issue than an environmental one.
In the quest for energy and cost savings, a recent survey from the Linear Tape-Open Program shows companies using hard disk-only storage have begun to look at tape storage technology as part of a tiered storage infrastructure to support backup and archiving.
More than 80 percent plan to add tape storage within 12 months due to its low energy consumption, low cost of ownership and portability for data protection.
Other studies show that tape-based backup and archiving solutions can deliver substantial total cost of ownership benefits and energy savings, particularly compared to spinning disks.
Benefits of tape over disk
Tape is an ideal medium for the long-term archival of data.
Some industry professionals believe disk drives are so cheap one should simply archive to disk, but disk is not a viable, long-term option for reasons of cost, space and practicality.
Adding disk drives is far more costly than tape - once a reasonably sized disk array is full, it is far more practical and secure to migrate data to tape than to add drives.
When the required infrastructure surrounding disk is added, disk is many times more costly than archiving on tape.
Implementing better data management and archiving to tape will reduce backup and restore times significantly, bringing the dual benefits of less wear and tear on the server while cutting power use.
Designed for daily use, disk drives might not be compatible with future hardware, software and protocols, making them a risky proposition for long-term archiving. Put one on a shelf for a few years, and it may never spin again.
Devising a green strategy
While it is important for equipment manufacturers to have a green product roadmap, it is essential the industry establishes its own "green storage" best practices and develops a common terminology.
The Storage Networking Industry Association has set up a taskforce and technical working group to address green storage.
Because it is difficult to obtain the independent information needed to determine data centre efficiencies, calculate companies' carbon footprints and do energy modelling, the SNIA is developing resources to help IT managers understand and address environmental issues.
For companies, it is important to consider three areas: an assessment of the data centre with the goal of reducing power consumption; a formal assessment of IT equipment recycling; and a carbon footprint analysis.
An important first step in that formal assessment of the data centre is to determine how much energy a company's storage consumes and what it costs.
Basic statistics on power consumption and heat production can often be obtained from equipment manufacturers. If not, it may be possible to measure power consumption by installing temporary meters on the circuits feeding storage devices and air-conditioning.
Once energy usage has been determined, the next step is to calculate costs. Then recommendations can be developed on how energy usage could be decreased without compromising business needs.
The future
Curtailing energy consumption and addressing climate change will require governments, industries and individuals to seek solutions.
To achieve real and lasting results, all of these groups must make real, long-term commitments for a sustainable future.
Existing regulations on facility compliance like ISO 14000 are part of a series of international standards on environmental management and product compliance that includes legislation like RoHS and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).
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