THE PATH TO A GREEN DATA CENTER Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade Joint Solution Brief
Hitachi Data Systems The Growing Need for Green Data Center Solutions 50 percent of data centers worldwide will have insufficient power and cooling by 2008. 1 37 percent of the data center s overall power consumption is used by storage. 2 40 percent of the data center s overall power consumption is used by servers. 3 60 percent of the energy used by traditional data centers to cool their equipment is wasted. 4 255 exabytes: The projected total volume of corporate data generated worldwide for 2007. 5 988 exabytes: The projected total volume of corporate data worldwide for 2010. 6 1 Gartner Says 50 Percent of Data Centers Will Have Insufficient Power and Cooling Capacity by 2008, Gartner, Inc. Press Release, November 29, 2006 2,3 Power costs put the squeeze on storage, Alan Radding, Storage Magazine, March 2007 4 Why Going Green Will Become Essential for Data Centers, Rakesh Kumar, Gartner Research VP, Gartner, Inc. Research Note, October 2006 5,6 The Expanding Digital Universe, John F. Gantz, Project Director, IDC White Paper, March 2007 MAKING THE GREEN DATA CENTER A REALITY The environment is everyone s concern. That s why Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade have developed eco-friendly solutions to address the needs of today s data centers. As IT organizations worldwide move through the millennium, they face the combined challenge of exponential data growth, dwindling energy resources, rising energy costs, and increased pressure to operate in an environmentally sound manner. Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade are committed to providing organizations with a cost-effective, eco-friendly, and socially responsible approach to managing data center growth and maximizing Storage Area Network (SAN) and File Area Network (FAN) efficiencies. By designing, manufacturing, and supporting environmentally friendly storage infrastructures, Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade are helping organizations meet their business requirements for storage growth, while minimizing impact on the environment and reducing overall storage costs. Together, these companies are providing scalable solutions to increase storage density and performance, and decrease power consumption for a green data center now and in the future. MAXIMIZING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY IN STORAGE NETWORKING Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade recognize that using the most energy-efficient building blocks is critical to helping organizations meet their environmental directives while creating cost-effective data centers that can scale over time. Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade have both developed innovative storage technologies and processes to maximize operational efficiency in the data center. These innovations include the use of storage and server virtualization, energy-efficient SAN switches and directors, tiered storage infrastructures, data deduplication, 2
and consolidation of enterprise-wide assets. Utilizing these technologies, organizations can achieve more efficient storage asset utilization and reduce their carbon footprint in their data centers and beyond. Storage and Server Virtualization Hitachi Data Systems has pioneered controller-based virtualization, a technology that separates storage controllers from the storage media in any type of environment. This advanced architecture helps reduce power, cooling, and space requirements. The Hitachi Universal Storage Platform family, consisting of virtualized storage and data services, combined with thin provisioning software, is built on this technology, and allows organizations to grow their data centers with minimal environmental impact. Organizations can manage up to 247 petabytes at up to 4.0 million I/O operations per second on a single controller. In addition, the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform delivers a wide range of storage, data, and content services for greater flexibility. Organizations therefore require fewer storage devices and ultimately less electricity and space. The Hitachi Universal Storage Platform further minimizes energy usage by avoiding data center hot spots for both consolidation and virtualization implementations. Organizations can increase resource utilization and dynamically migrate data to temporary storage while repositioning the original storage to optimize power and cooling. Brocade also has harnessed the power of virtualization technology to design highly efficient data infrastructure solutions. Brocade server virtualization software technology enables multiple instances of operating systems and applications to be hosted on a single server hardware platform, reducing the total amount of hardware and associated power consumption for business applications. More efficient AC-to-DC conversion, reduced heat dissipation, and more efficient use of CPU cycles by individual servers all have a significant positive impact when multiplied by the thousands of servers typically found in large data centers. In addition, by combining concentrated blade servers and Brocade server virtualization software, organizations can support more data transactions further reducing the size of the data center and its cooling requirements. Energy-Efficient SAN Switches and Directors By using power efficiency as a product design criteria, Brocade is helping to reduce electricity costs and environmental impact, while accommodating growth in SAN connectivity. For the storage network infrastructure that connects servers to storage, the complex of switches and directors typical of large data centers represents another green challenge. The Brocade 48000 Director offers a practical, long-term solution. As the most power-efficient Fibre Channel director in the industry (based on independent lab tests), the Brocade 48000 requires three times less power than similar competitive products. In fact, with the energy required to power a competitive solution, organizations could save over 15,000 pounds or 7 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year per director. Organizations can then accommodate steady growth in SAN connectivity, while reducing carbon emissions and power consumption. DATA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT AND TIERED STORAGE By combining Data Lifecycle Management to track the value of data at any point in time with tiered classes of storage, organizations can migrate data from a higher-energy usage asset to a lower one, reducing power and cooling consumption, as well as costs. Brocade StorageX supports Data Lifecycle Management through an integrated suite of applications designed to logically aggregate 3
Hitachi Data Systems Brocade Director 48000 Delivers Significant Energy Savings Competitive Offering 384 Port Director Competitive Offering BROCADE Brocade Advantage Power (W) 3337 AC* 1127 AC Cooling (BTU) 10690 3845 Watts/Port 6.5 2.2 Power/Gb BW 4.7 <1 Carbon Footprint/yr 12.28 tonnes 4.15 tonnes Yearly kg of CO 2/port 32 kg per port 11 kg per port Electrical Cost!3 yrs $8,165 $2,757 *Source: www.brocade.com/competitive 5 times more power efficiency Significant power and cooling savings More effective rack density More efficient use of power budget Significantly lower carbon footprint Figure 1. Three-year power and cost differences between operating the Brocade 48000 Director and a competitive product. distributed file data across heterogeneous environments and provide administrators with policies to automate data management. IT administrators can classify data based on business-relevant categories and run customizable reports to meet their specific needs for determining data migration requirements. These reports can provide the foundation for successfully implementing data lifecycle management and storage optimization strategies. Similarly, Hitachi Data Systems is helping organizations reduce power consumption in their backup and archival environments by linking consumption to application need. With the Hitachi Power Savings Storage Service, organizations can power down volumes (disks) in the AMS and WMS midrange lineup when they are not being accessed by business applications. The disks can then be powered up quickly when the application requires them. This ability to spin drives up and down according to application needs can help organizations significantly reduce their power and cooling requirements. Data Deduplication Organizations with geographically dispersed sites and remote offices often face data redundancy issues. If every remote location has its own storage system, green storage challenges are multiplied across the corporate network. The Brocade suite of FAN solutions is helping organizations worldwide centralize their storage assets while maintaining rapid response times for remote users. In addition, Brocade recognizes that for file-oriented applications, identifying and eliminating redundant copies of files can dramatically reduce total storage requirements. Brocade StorageX enables a uniform, enterprise-wide file system namespace that simplifies administration and promotes more efficient utilization of storage regardless of geographical location. Brocade also provides data compression to disk, along with data deduplication technologies, that can help organizations preserve data accessibility while reducing the amount of storage, disk drives, and the accompanying power usage required. 4
Storage Consolidation Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade both offer solutions that help consolidate enterprise-wide assets. In addition to benefiting the environment, these products provide organizations with greater operational flexibility. Hitachi Data Systems storage management software and storage systems provide highly efficient, state-of-the-art external storage consolidation. Offerings include: Hitachi Universal Volume Manager Hitachi Storage Management and HiCommand Suite Hitachi High-performance NAS Platform, powered by BlueArc Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning To further reduce power, cooling, and floor space requirements, organizations can combine more efficient storage consolidation and virtualization strategies, as well as allocate virtual disk storage based on anticipated future needs. Brocade provides organizations with an eco-friendly approach to data center consolidation through its continued integration of advanced fabric-based storage services. The current trend in data center consolidation is to eliminate more SAN fabric elements by collapsing connectivity into larger-port-count directors in a tiered core-edge design. Brocade has designed the Brocade Data Center Fabric (DCF) architecture around a larger chassis platform that not only supports denser port connectivity and advanced storage services, but also optimizes energy efficiency. This level of efficiency is especially vital for enterprise data centers that deploy hundreds of directors supporting thousands of servers and storage devices. Brocade Green in Action Over the past two generations of switches and directors, Brocade has increased density and doubled performance while reducing power consumption: Brocade reduced system power by half at the same density for its second-generation director platforms at 2 Gbit/sec. Since 2004, Brocade has delivered systems that provide twice the performance per port and three times the port density of previous generations while consuming approximately 1000 Watts fully configured more than a 500 percent improvement over previous systems. Brocade products are two to three times more efficient than comparable offerings, enabling organizations to save over $10,000 per system in operating costs over a three-year period. DESIGNING DATA CENTERS OF THE FUTURE Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade recognize that many facilities were not designed for the scale and density of today s IT requirements. As a result, most organizations must attempt to grow their operations within their available data center resources, and adhere to corporate initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact. 5
Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Data Systems Green in Action Hitachi Data Systems, along with Hitachi, Ltd., has a long history and proven track record for supplying environmentally friendly storage solutions to companies worldwide: The Assessment for DfE (Design for Environment) program assesses Hitachi products against various criteria, including resource reduction, product longevity, resource recycling, and ease of decomposition. Winner of a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) award in 1991 and 1997 for Ozone Protection. Formulation of initial Corporate Environmental Action Plan in 1992. The Storage Economics Strategy Service from Hitachi Data Systems helps organizations design the right storage infrastructure to meet their environmental directives and business requirements now and in the future. These infrastructure design services focus on the environmental costs of storage technology and can yield improved power efficiency, more economic cooling systems, and reduced real estate requirements. PROACTIVELY WORKING TOWARD A GREENER FUTURE Going green means that today s organizations must re-examine all aspects of their IT operations including facilities, people, and infrastructure so they can proactively implement best-practice strategies and identify areas where they can achieve greater power efficiencies. With this goal in mind, Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade are working with other industry leaders to drive standards for data center efficiency. Hitachi Data Systems actively participates in the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) while Brocade participates in SNIA and The Green Grid initiative. Together, both companies are seeking practical, cost-effective ways to solve energy issues specific to storage networking and data center infrastructure and reduce the carbon impact of data centers today and for future generations. MAXIMIZING IT INVESTMENTS AND EFFECTING POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade are committed to providing storage solutions that enable organizations to build and grow eco-friendly data centers. Both companies have developed clearly defined roadmaps, standardized management processes, and next-generation products to help organizations achieve the goal of a green data center. By investing in green solutions from Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade, organizations are not only receiving performance and value, but contributing to a cleaner, healthier planet for everyone. 6
The power consumption of Brocade directors and switches has always been excellent, and it always seems to be improving. When we moved to the new Brocade 48000s, power consumption dropped by more than 50 percent, which is a huge benefit. When you have thousands of storage and backup clients, even a dollar a day savings per device can quickly add up. Chad Smykay Storage Engineer Rackspace Managed Hosting ITCentrix s analysis of market leading high-end storage solutions shows that for an I/O-intensive configuration of 215 terabytes, competitive solutions consume from 41% to 66% more budget for power, cooling and space than comparably configured Hitachi USP V* using virtualization and dynamic provisioning. Dave Vellante President and CEO ITCentrix * Hitachi Universal Storage Platform TM V models Learn more at: www.brocade.com www.hds.com/green 7
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