Energy Efficiency: What You Can Do: Page 4 of 9

Where Does Storage Fit in the Energy Equation?

While storage is often one of the fastest growing parts of an infrastructure, it’s not the most power consumptive. The table below shows the culprits of power consumption within the data center based on customer interviews within the Wikibon user community and some modeling done with input from electric companies.

Table 1: Data Center Power Consumption

The following findings are relevant:

• IT equipment directly accounts for more than one-half of energy consumption in the typical data center;
• Storage accounts for 15 percent of the total, while servers, at 30 percent, are the most consumptive;
• The current maximum loading for storage equipment is less than 1,000 watts/sq ft (compared to 1µ blade equipment, which is already at 10,000 watts/sq ft);
• Projected storage loading is less than 2,000 watts/sq ft by 2012 (migration from 3.5" to 2.5" is included in projection).

The most important fact to remember is that if you only focus on air conditioning and power distribution you’re missing half of the problem – the IT equipment itself. Addressing the IT piece of the pie automatically allows the temperature of a data center to be raised, creating more bang for your buck.