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Green IT is in, and finding ways to store data with less power consumption can go a long way toward helping organizations run more environmentally-friendly operations. These efforts can also help reduce the costs of storage and improve users’ access to information.

According to a recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) survey of 500 global IT managers, four of the top 10 data center technologies that managers are using or considering to control power and cooling costs are storage-related. These include more power-efficient storage systems, data-reduction technologies that reduce overall storage capacity, tiered storage, and storage virtualization.

There are lots of options today for managing and storing data in ways that are more energy efficient, says Mark Peters, an analyst with ESG. These include reviewing processes, such as the number and frequency of data backups; and implementing tools to optimize the amount of data (for example, deduplication and compression), the amount of bought and available capacity that’s actually in use (virtualization and thin provisioning), and the types of storage in use (tiering so that only the most active data is stored on the fastest and most power-hungry storage devices).

Organizations should move non-production data off energy-burning servers to more efficient archives “when the usage and your business model doesn't demand it stay there,” Peters says. He says ESG research shows that the overwhelming majority of data is infrequently accessed 90 days after it is created. And since the data likely doesn't change, it makes sense to put it on more power-efficient devices and not back it up frequently.

The decision on when to transfer data to archives depends on the application, says David Reinsel, group vice president, Storage and Semiconductors, at research firm IDC. “ Generally speaking, as data ages it increases the likelihood for it to be moved to lower storage tiers or off of servers to more efficient archives,” Reinsel says. “The problem is really having the right policy engine to do this. Any given application may have data that needs to stay on primary storage, and other data that can be archived.”

Enterprises can also make changes in data center design to help increase energy efficiency, including “simple adjustments like hot/cold aisles, cleaning out and streamlining the wiring below the raised floor, and redirecting the air flow with supply and return vents,” Reinsel says.

Another way to improve efficiency is to use fewer spinning disk drives. “An interesting dynamic that exacerbates this issue is that data enterprise storage requirements are increasing at 50-plus percent, while the average capacity of HDDs [hard disk drives] overall is increasing at around 35%,” Reinsel says. As a result, IT managers are looking to position more and more data toward higher-capacity, 7,200-rpm Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives that offer energy savings due to the slower spindle speed as well as the ability to store much more data per drive.

Experts say technologies such as data deduplication, storage virtualization and thin provisioning will continue to gain in popularity as organizations look for ways to run greener storage operations.

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