Think Green - When Thinking About Buying Your Data Storage

In today’s ‘Wall Street Journal’ revelations as big name Data Storage vendor seek to find more ‘Energy Efficient Technologies' too reduce power consumption and ultimately partake in an effort to reduce green house emissions generated by storage systems.

All be it page 2 news, environment concerns impact everybody, including IT.

Information technology is well known for being power hungry (in the energy sense). Policies have been put in motion to reduce the overall impact IT has on the environment, staring with RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) in Europe. RoHS Compliance enforces manufacture of IT equipment reduce the amounts of heavy metals (solder, copper, zinc, etc) used in production.

Recently (April 2007) Plasmon released a white paper entitled: ‘Green Archival Storage’. The paper in summary:

Rising electricity costs, new legislation on climate change and increased environmental awareness are all factors driving organisations to take a careful look at the energy consumption of their IT infrastructure. Choosing energy efficient IT products and strategies can dramatically reduce escalating electricity bills and improve operational efficiencies while developing environmentally responsible corporate policies. One area where significant green gains can be realised is in the archival storage of business information.

The paper compares the electrical requirements and carbon footprint of network attached digital archive solutions from three leading storage vendors. The products selected were the NearStore R200 magnetic disk solution from Network Appliance (NetApp), two different configurations of the EMC magnetic disk Centera product, and Plasmon’s UDO Archive Appliance based on professional optical storage technology.

The diagram below summarises the results of the analysis comparing the electrical cost of the four different products for a 40TB (terabytes) archive over 10 years of operation using an average energy cost from New York, London and Tokyo with a consecutive 6% yearly increase. The chart also reflects two different archive strategies for each product.

The Big Drivers For Green Data Storage Archival:

• Save Money Reducing Power Consumption
• Save Money Reducing Cooling Costs
• 'Future Proof Technology' - Purpose built Archiving technology that give users growth & Backward Compatibility
• Reduced Management Costs - increasing Disk Requires Increased Management
• WORM (Write Once Read Many) - Authenticity of Data in archive (unalterable data)
• Portability - Removable Archive for long term retention, replication & Disaster Recovery
• Media Longevity - long term strategy's (access to data in 5+ years) requires technology that will last the distance

Climate change is one of the most important global issue facing mankind in the 21st century. For those living in the developed world, it will have a major impact on how we conduct our lives both personally and professionally. There is a recognition that our traditional energy supplies are neither endless nor secure, and a growing understanding of how their use and overuse is harmful to our environment. As a consequence, governments, corporations and individuals are taking action to raise awareness and curb excessive and damaging use of energy resources.

If you would like to view this green archival paper please follow this link HERE

Bruce Macdonald brucem@auststor.com.au ADS (AustSTOR Data Storage)

	UDO-2 RELEASED 60GB - Ultra Density Optical from Plasmon Released in Australia

This is a very exciting start to the month of May, with the release of Ultra Density Optical Second Generation (UDO-2). Following up from the success of the First Generation, UDO-2 brings to the industry greater capacity and greater value for money.

UDO-2 features

Archive Without Compromise

UDO Technology Overview

Plasmon Press Release

	Nexsan Assureon Wins ITPro Editors Choice

Overall Rating:

Verdict: The Assureon appears expensive for what it is, but as a secure, manageable CAS solutions which will help meet the changing face of data compliance, it is a very good option.

The Nexsan Assureon is marketed as a storage security product and oddly enough, that's just what it is. Another way of looking at it, is as a Content Addressable Storage (CAS) disaster recovery solution. The Assureon uses multiple servers and storage devices and can be located in multiple sites for wide area replication.

The Nexsan Assureon Already has a bag full of awards including:

	Phoenix CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) - Choose Plasmon for Crime Scene Archiving

Quick View

Organization: Phoenix Police Dept. CSI Unit

Industry: Government

Application: Image Storage

Solution: Plasmon™ G-Series Library

ROI:
- Efficient and cost-effective recording, safe archiving,
and quick accessibility of crime-scene photographs
- Availability to more than 500 users at six locations in
the Phoenix area

	QStar SntryStr - Delivers Appliance Based Archiving for any Operating System & any Storage technology

QStar's SntryStr and SntryStrML Archiving Appliances offer a feature pack Storage Management Solution:

• Supporting over 16 different Operating Systems
• Seamless Plug and Play Network Connectivity
• Support the widest storage mediums (CAS Disk - EMC Centera, Nexsan - Assureon, Plasmon - UDO, CD/DVD, BlueRay, Tape, etc)
• Onboard Disk for seamless real time access to archive data
• Built in Disaster Recovery - Remote Data Replication, Multipule Data Copies, Media Replication, etc