Energy saving to see key energy consumption problems in storage market

When energy consumption itself becomes a problem in the server industry, it indicates that it will also be a problem for the storage system. According to some experts, research shows that if we switch to a wall socket on a large scale on the server and storage system, we will greatly reduce energy consumption. According to Don Beaty, an IT consultant from DLB, the conversion between alternating current and DC power in many data centers often takes a number of steps. Don himself is also a member of the American Association of Heating, refrigeration and air conditioners, and has long been dedicated to data center energy consumption and temperature control.

Beaty said, "from the source of the current output to the server, and then to the internal server, the conversion between the current has been completed many times." "He is working with server vendors, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to work together to find a standard voltage," said Bill Tschudi, chief researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in charge of environmental energy technology. and redesign the server to achieve the problem of obtaining energy from the DC power between the two.

Although Tschudi's teams have not yet started working with storage vendors, problems with energy conversion can be applied to any computer. Today's motherboards are still using multi-step, inefficient voltage conversions between different voltages, which were designed in the late 70 or 80, and the design of that era requires multilevel voltage conversions. It is also necessary to explain that reducing the number of voltage conversion is the most effective way to solve the data center energy consumption problem. "Even with today's state-of-the-art power technology, DC efficiency can only increase by 10% to 15%, and once we can use the average conversion system on a large scale, the overall performance improvement rate could rise to 20% to 30%," Tschudi said. ”

Energy saving: Key to the storage market

For now, the direction of the storage industry is unclear. Some manufacturers, such as Sun, have been ambitious to promote the standardization of voltage levels since the advent of 2.5-inch disks. "In the current market, there are usually 5 volts and 12 volts in the enterprise system," said Chris Wood, chief technology officer at Sun Corp. 's storage group. "The higher voltages are suitable for high-speed operations like 3.5-inch disks, but once the small size disk is in the market, the customer actually needs a smaller engine and a lower voltage, and in this sense we can even abolish the 12 volt voltage," Wood said. Wood also said, "Now the entire industry is moving toward small size disk storage direction, which is one of the reasons we have described the problem before." ”

NetApp's storage device is the only storage device that has been "observed" at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States, according to Tschudi. "They are experimenting with NetApp products to see the process of conversion, and they are also working to improve efficiency by lifting the refrigeration design," Tschudi described. "NetApp battles, storage marketing director, said their company has so far not made too many changes because of the" intrusive observation "of the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We still have the technology to evaluate our new power supply, but because we are still in the initial stages of the evaluation process, so far we haven't got much detailed data so we don't have to do much about it." "HDS is another major storage vendor looking to use the direct power option. "Although we are still in the early stages of discovery, we are still working on the use of direct current and the choice of other nodal measures," their chief scientist, Claus Mikkelsen, said. ”

Between redundancy and efficiency, we must find a good balance.

Storage-System vendors Xyratex technology and the Dot Hill system have launched their own storage systems designed for DC voltage power supplies. However, Ken Claffey, the head of power supply for Xyratex technology, says that saving energy in a storage system is not as simple as reducing the number of transitions or even redesigning a better power supply. "In power efficient research and development, storage systems are limited in two ways, from the need to have enough energy to ensure that the disks are running at a higher rate, and demand for redundancy and reliability," he said. ”

It is also necessary to explain that reducing the number of voltage conversion is the most effective way to solve the data center energy consumption problem.

In order to achieve high availability, even the most efficient energy supply is often too overallocated to consume as much energy as the storage system needs to run at full capacity, or even twice times what the system really wants. Xyatex Company is looking for a more efficient power supply, but Claffey says, "between redundancy and efficiency, we must find a good balance." "Xyratex is recently testing a tool that enables dynamic load balancing of power supplies so that the voltage can be adjusted automatically according to the system's own load."

The Dot Hill system says there are other better ways to reduce storage energy consumption than to make a fuss about voltage switching. One of them is the use of maid technology, which is one of the technologies used in the Dot Hill Company's products.

Both the user and the government already know. In May 2007, the EPA submitted a report on energy efficiency to Congress, which, although primarily for servers, was considered one of the storage-system-related reports. This preliminary report assesses the total cost of energy in enterprise storage systems, including networks, controllers, switches, which generate 50% or more of the cost of energy than simple disk drives.