Unlike MAID vendors, which use low-cost SATA drives, HDS is also extending its power saving technology to Fibre Channel drives. "There are some intermediate volumes where you want high performance [Fibre Channel] drives [available within your array]," says Yoshida, using the example of backups that have to be performed within a certain time window. "It can take a long time to do this with SATA drives, but with a Fibre Channel drive, it's much faster."
MAID nonetheless appears to have the edge on PSSS in terms of actual power savings. Users have already shaved around 75 percent off their energy bills through MAID, thanks to the fact that disks are typically idle. HDS, on the other hand, is touting potential savings of around 20 percent as a result of its reliance on active disks.
At least one analyst thinks PSSS technology is a step in the right direction. "The bottom line is that when you look at power consumption on storage, that culprit is disk drives," says Dave Vellante, co-founder and lead storage analyst of the Wikibon user group, explaining that disks typically account for 60 percent of the power consumed by storage systems. "If you can attack the problem of spinning disk, youre going to address the issue of power."
Some users have voiced unease about spinning disks down, citing worries about spinning the disks back up again, although Vellante urges them to get over this fear. "When storage administrators say 'I don't trust a drive that spins up and down,' I say 'don't you use a laptop?' "
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