I'm pleased to see more attention being given to energy reduction, and specifically to energy reduction in data center equipment. An increasing number of announcements, news items and blogs are giving equal time to energy reduction – the lesser known sibling to alternative clean energy sources.

As Joe Polastre noted in this blog, the foundation of energy independence consists of two fundamental efforts – alternative, clean energy sources alongside the reduction of energy. Driving hard on both efforts is key to making progress on our goals here. With much national, and international attention paid to clean energy, it was gratifying to see some recent announcements regarding energy reduction.

One such announcement was from The Storage Networking Industry Association, SNIA, which announced last week that it was releasing its initial Green Storage Initiative (GSI) Green Storage Power Measurement Specification for public viewing. Having spent many years in the storage business myself, I know that the growth of storage is astronomical and its energy efficiency is weak. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report to Congress reported that storage devices had the highest power consumption growth rate (191%) and the highest overall power consumption at 32.3% of the total data center equipment power consumption - making the potential of this initiative significant in the context of data center energy reduction. I applaud the initiative and will be interested in its evolution and ultimate implementation. But it also got me thinking…

The initial standard is around "storage power consumption at idle." A good start, but active power measurement guidelines are equally critical and these sound like they are still on the drawing board. Moreover, I’m interested in the implementation timelines and the ultimate motivation in having storage systems that adhere to these standards. Most of what I read about in terms of data center energy reduction is around servers – storage vendors have flown under the radar here and I think more progress should be made more quickly. Perhaps initiatives like these will shine a brighter light here, I guess we’ll see.

Finally, how will these specifications be measured and managed once installed? Will the systems ship with power monitoring capability or will they continue to run open loop when it comes to power management? Third party energy management solutions will be needed in the meantime, and should be used to better understand the current state of storage energy efficiency. The varying energy profiles relative to age, application type and capacity utilization make storage a prime target for energy reduction and should not be taken lightly.