Companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint often look to power utilization in facilities and office locations first. But there’s a lot that can be done in IT alone to reduce power consumption. One kilowatt saved in IT can translate to multiple kilowatts saved in facility power usage, which makes it a great place to start.
If power utilization is the largest recurring cost in the data center, what process, software, and hardware decisions can IT practitioners make to improve utilization and build in efficiency on an operational level?
First, let’s look at what actually uses power in a data center—the heartbeat of IT. Data centers use approximately 1.8% of electricity in the US, and that comes from a number of components, including:
These are the biggest consumers of power in the data center. For every watt of power you use in a data center, it generates an equivalent amount of heat, which you have to then move out of the data center. Air conditioning in data centers is much more complex than the HVAC unit in a typical home. These specialized systems often include cooling towers, chillers, water pumps, and indoor units—all of which interact with one another through complex systems (and consume a fair amount of power themselves).
The efficiency of a data center is measured in power utilization efficiency (PUE), which is calculated using a formula that divides total facility power by IT equipment power.
Developed in the mid-1990s, object storage was created largely to address the issue of scalability. Traditional file and block storage, which were developed much earlier, aren’t equipped to Typically, data centers don’t turn off—ever. And especially those on which major infrastructures rely. That means power needs to be on around the clock, which creates a constant heat source. This requires durable, reliable, and powerful cooling systems to thermally regulate IT equipment, which is much more sensitive to temperature fluctuations than the human body. Smart, efficient, and precise tech is required to maintain optimal temperatures and carefully engineered interactions between components.
The cooling systems in data centers include:
These are typically deployed in configurations/cooling strategies that meet the specifications of each data center, including:
The data center will always be dependent on the needs of IT, and vice versa. As a result, starting with improved IT efficiency can help IT teams address the issue at the root. Some strategies to take include:
Monitoring can indicate how much power is quoted by various devices. Most vendors can offer very accurate numbers here.
Pure1® now gives storage admins a tool to track efficiency and carbon output in their own data centers. Pure1 has a dashboard with monitoring that displays current carbon emissions in the data center.
Disk systems are one of the biggest sources of data storage power utilization.
The one area where power utilization is going down, not up, is storage technology—thanks to flash. Storage is one of the few technologies where we, as an industry, have the opportunity to lower power consumption of the data center while increasing performance, density, and efficiency.
Historically, this transition has been slow compared to consumer devices, especially in hyperscaler data centers, but it’s happening. New generations of flash are far more efficient per terabyte than spinning disk. And no other storage vendor is doing it better than Pure Storage® and our highly efficient DirectFlash® technology. DirectFlash is a system-level approach to flash media management, rather than a drive-level approach.
With FlashArray//XL™, Pure introduces DirectFlash Modules with built-in non-volatile RAM. They reduce rack space requirements by removing dedicated NVRAM slots from the main array chassis. Also, the larger 5U chassis of FlashArray//XL provides more space for fans and airflow, which improves cooling efficiency.
One of the most helpful approaches is a tiered backup architecture. It allows you to separate data snapshots that are hot, warm, or cold. A data-only bunker can safely store large amounts of data that aren’t needed for immediate use.
Check out this post for an example of a tiered bunker architecture you can create with Pure >>
Redundant data can be necessary, but it can also be a drain on data center resources. And if IT can’t be efficient about what data is being stored and why, the data center can’t be efficient, either. According to the Worldwide IDC Global DataSphere Forecast, around 60% of storage data will be inactive cold data by 2025, referred to as “cold data.” Finding more efficient ways to store it can reduce load on data centers.
You know what data reduction software, compression, and deduplication can do for TCO and economics. But it plays in efficiency, too. If you think about this in terms of the application itself and the amount of energy needed to serve a given application, the more we can do to reduce that, the less equipment we have to put out there, and the more efficient it will be. More proactive deduplication can also enable a significant reduction in e-waste, not just in storage systems but also in systems surrounding storage arrays.
Revisit data retention and deletion policies to ensure what’s saved is necessary and compliant >>
Designing racks and leveraging storage equipment with a smaller footprint and less cooling requirements can decrease the burden on cooling systems.
Improving the density of storage systems can have an impact, too. To help enterprises meet new environmental impact and sustainability goals, FlashBlade//S™ produces the most efficient results on key performance, space, and power metrics, such as usable capacity per watt, throughput per watt, and usable capacity per rack unit.
“Pure is building systems that are three, four, five, sometimes 10 times as dense as the competition. If we can deliver a petabyte worth of storage with 5x less other stuff surrounding it, that system will be way more efficient.” –Rob Lee, CTO, Pure Storage.
Learn more about how modern storage can offset power utilization in the data center >>
The IT supply chain often comprises numerous vendors and partners that you can select based on design, delivery, and efficiency. Your IT supply chain is therefore only as green as the vendors and partners you rely on.
Pure FlashArray™ lowers energy usage by up to 80% compared to competitive all-flash systems—a figure even more prominent when compared to spinning disk. Rethinking your storage technology can be a great way to reduce carbon output and achieve ESG initiatives.
Object Storage is a storage format in which data is stored in discrete units called objects. Each unit has a unique identifier or key, which allows them to be found no matter where they’re stored “What we're doing with DirectFlash in QLC and beyond drives a significant amount of efficiency out of the raw media that really nobody else in the industry is going to be able to get,” says Pure CTO Rob Lee. Modern storage is proven to offset power utilization in the data center—but it doesn’t stop there. The Pure Storage portfolio is storage transformed, packed with the features and capabilities to seamlessly address all of the strategies mentioned above. Here’s how.
퓨어스토리지 제품이나 인증 관련 질문이나 코멘트가 있으신가요? 저희가 도와드립니다.
라이브 데모를 예약하고 퓨어스토리지가 데이터를 어떻게 강력한 결과로 전환해주는지 직접 확인해 보세요.