Storage holds the real key as most data centers already understand the benefits server vitualization. If I utilize real thin provisioning and automated tiered ILM, so that only my active data sits on 15K spindles while the rest of my data sits on 5K SATA, I am talking real money here. We all know that 80% of our data is inactive, but how do I sort it out?

We now have our customers developing a pool of FC disks to handle I/O for the active data, and then large “cans” (1TB SATA) to handle all the inactive data. The software moves data up and down based on usage – and this is done in 2mb blocks.

The savings are incredible – and simple to implement.

I love technology

Paul Clifford
Davenport Group
http://www.davenportgroup.com

And, yes, I think Robin is correct.

I for one find it funny that Microsoft is putting out this paper.

Thanks for highlighting this very interesting development on StorageMojo, and I’ll be curious to see posts that shed light on just how many plan to price data center services along power rather than square footage metrics.

For large organisations power usage (and cooling costs) are extremely visible. Not just the electricity bill itself, but the horrendous costs of upgrading data centre space. Most data centres I know have no problem with space (although it’s often expressed that way). What they have a problem with is power and cooling – in many cases, at least in the UK, there are practical limits as to the amount of power that the supply companies are willing to provide, at least withought horrendous costs.

So this issue of power consumption is a massive issue in companies with large data centres. As for smaller organisations, then they will gradually learn. All the major IT equipment vendors that I know of have power consumption near the top of their issue list. It may only be clearly visible to operators of large data centres, but it will gradually dawn on all companies that the price of powering other IT equipment (PCs, monitors, local servers, comms equipment etc.) is still there, even if it can’t easily be distinguished from office lighting. It’s easy enough to do the mathematics on this.

There will be legislation though – in the EU there will inevitably be standards on things like standby power consumption for consumer equipment (and cars). However, it’s a bit more difficult to legislate for what the proper power consumption ought to be for a given amount of storage. Frankly the market will eventually drive this – maybe late, but it will. The west is now suffering the consequences of overly cheap power (as it is also suffering the consequences of overly cheap borrowing). There will be a market-driven correction, and it will feed through to engineering priorities on IT equipment.

My position is such that I get to see so many vendor roadmaps that sometimes I want to stab my eyes out. Power utilization reductions are on the product roadmaps of every major vendor in computing and storage. One would think that these manufacturers would not make products if they did not think there was demand.

What’s happening at a minimum, in many large companies anyway, is that the folks that want and need servers are finding server room after server room out of either power or cooling budget. This is bringing power and cooling to the eye of engineering, albeit through an indirect route.

The real question should be: with all this “green” going on, will we use less power? I doubt it very much. I think we’ll just squeeze more in there.

Consider virtualization, the IT trend of de jure. Virtual servers spin off like no tomorrow. You fulfill very much more by way of need than you did before, but you spend the same and push that much more in there. To some degree or another, anyway.

Joe.