Sustainable Green Data Storage
What is Sustainable Green Data Storage?Sustainable data storage allows companies to maintain business continuity and compliance with energy efficient hardware. What is causing the need for more storage?Changes in both business and consumer practices are driving the need for more storage. On the business side, with the introduction of the Sarbanes Oxley law in 2002, there is an increased need for compliance in data reporting. Companies rely on network stability and expedient data access to maintain business continuity. In addition, large company mergers and acquisitions translate into data consolidation. On the consumer side, electronic media such as digital photography, video on demand, and the electronic gaming industry are creating enormous data storage surges on the network. Global consumers are expecting continuous and increasing free, online e-mail storage. Business and consumer trends are causing increases in data storage usage. More data storage use means more electricity consumption. IDC, an industry market research firm, states that data storage is increasing at a rate of 60% per year. This means that if you have 100 TB of production data in 2008, you’ll need to plan for 160 TB in 2009 and 256 TB in 2010. In addition, research figures from US Department of energy show that 1.5% of US electricity usage is generated from data storage. From 2000 to 2006, electricity use by end-use components rose from 28.2 billion kWh to 61.4 billion KWh. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports from 2000-2006, the compounded average growth rate of electricity use from electronic data storage increased 20%--- superseding increases from site infrastructure, network equipment, and servers. Increased demand for storage and increased electricity use by components results in an overall rise on energy usage. Generally, the recommended back up rule is to have ten times on-hand disk capacity for future data growth. However, by leveraging Overland Storage solutions, such as deduplication and compression, IT managers can increase storage efficiency and optimize power consumption. Why do you need energy efficient data storage?Increasing data storage and electricity usage translates into higher operating costs. It is estimated that energy costs will outstrip capital expenditures in the near future. For example, according to the Uptime Institute, in 2006, it cost $95 to power a $1000 server. In 2012, it is estimated to cost $1,445 to power the same server. Therefore, you need energy efficient technologies and strategies such as consolidating/moving to a networked or virtualized storage, data deduplication, purchasing equipment with energy efficient components, and using high capacity disk drives to conserve data storage and electricity usage. To mitigate your environmental impact on rising data storage usage and increasing electricity use and to minimize your electricity expenses, it is beneficial to invest in storage that optimizes power consumption. Products from Overland Storage are RoHS compliant, are absent of heavy metals, increase storage efficiency and optimize power consumption. Overland Storage appliances have several environmental and sustainable data storage advantages:
|
|
