5 Steps for Managing a Greener Storage Environment

The amount of energy and resources required to keep a data center's ballooning storage systems running are growing exponentially. IDC analysts have estimated that in 2006, $29 billion was spent on powering and cooling IT systems in the US alone, and those numbers are going to continue to rise.

Today, many organizations strive to achieve environmental leadership while regulating costs across their business activities. Reducing storage hardware costs, cutting energy consumption and meeting IT demands, is a battle that is raging in almost every data center in the world. The EPA recently found that US commercial electrical costs increased by 10 percent from 2005 to 2006. In order to cut storage costs, maximize energy efficiency and create a greener data center environment, organizations need to employ a green storage strategy. They need to invest in initiatives that diagnose their storage infrastructure, help build or update existing storage hardware, provide Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) software, monitor their storage environment and utilize liquid and air cooling systems.

Step #1: Diagnose your energy efficiency

Many organizations struggle to obtain accurate and detailed information on the energy efficiency of their data centers and to identify what major opportunities exist for improvement. Add to this the fact that IDC says storage requirements are growing 50% per year and are among the largest consumers of energy in the data center, in most cases consuming 13 times more power than processors. If a data center is poorly designed from flawed layout of devices, unsound floor designs or the undesired intermixing of hot and cold air, energy consumption can be compounded by hotspots - regions of high power density that result. The first step in reducing storage costs is diagnosing what kind of data is being stored and what uses or requirements are necessary for the data. Once storage needs are diagnosed an IT manager can implement 3-D power management, thermal analytics and high efficiently cooling systems to dramatically reduce data center power use and overall energy consumption for the entire building.

Step #2: Build the right infrastructure

Once the requirements of the data are understood, companies can determine what components, software and ILM technologies will be needed. Building a more efficient storage infrastructure requires investment in new technologies and significant costs upfront, but the return on investment can be tenfold once the technology is in place. Determining the actual need of data, including size, characteristics, capacity and response time can dramatically cut costs. For example, a datacenter that is primarily using tape storage will almost always consume less power than a data center using more disk storage. The benefits of implementing energy friendly hardware can save the entire organization thousands of dollars in electricity bills. In some cases power companies even offer reduced electricity rates for organizations that have implemented green energy friendly technology into their data center.

Step #3: Manage and Virtualize Your Data

Another key component of a green storage infrastructure is understanding information lifecycle management (ILM) and implementing virtualization technologies that increase utilization of disk and tape is. In fact, virtualization can increase storage utilization by 20%, dramatically reducing total energy requirements. To virtualize a storage environment, an IT manager must first address the power requirements and efficiencies for all the different pieces of the storage system. Then storage virtualization software must be added to help move data from storage device to device, without interrupting availability. According to IDC, storage virtualization can actually drive up use rates from 25% to 60% or more, increasing efficiency and requiring fewer storage devices to run as frequently. Increasing usage density to increase disk density and implementing server virtualization, thin provisioning and data de-duplication technologies can also help consolidate and reduce costs.

Step #4: Monitor your utilization rates

Even with the right diagnosis, hardware and ILM solutions in place, a data center can only be as efficient at its management, and a well managed storage infrastructure will maintain energy efficiency. Data center resources are typically assigned to manage peak workload conditions, but most data centers run well below peak capacity the majority of the time, with hardware consuming power even when not being utilized. By implementing automated storage management software organizations realize dramatic cost savings. Additionally, utilizing real-time software tools to monitor actual power draw can help modify power consumption. Capacity planning and implementing storage management software to move infrequently used data from high performance disk to low performance tape storage should also be taken into account.

Step #5: Cool things down

With the amount of hardware residing in a typical data center, cooling becomes one of the most critical systems necessary to maintain a data center, and it has been estimated that each year organizations pay a significant part of the purchase price of a data center on powering, cooling, and housing the systems. Without proper cooling, a data center running on backup generators during a power outage will shut down in minutes. Conducting regular thermal assessments and exploiting liquid cooling solutions when feasible -- inside and out of the data center, will dramatically reduce and maintain data center costs.

Diagnosing, building, managing data, monitoring and cooling are integral to a business' goal of maintaining storage costs while simultaneously reducing energy consumption in the data center.

By following these five simple guidelines, IT managers can dramatically reduce data center consumption and begin creating a greener storage environment for their organization.

Tanapong Ittisakulchai is country manager, Systems & Technology Group, IBM Thailand