Adaptec Reduces Power Consumption

MILPITAS, Calif. -- To significantly increase the energy efficiency of disk-based storage, Adaptec Inc. (NASDAQ: ADPT), a global leader in storage solutions, today kicked off its Green Power initiative with the introduction of Adaptec Intelligent Power Management, a new capability that allows system OEMs, integrators and IT managers to easily custom-configure storage systems to reduce power consumption by up to 70 percent without sacrificing performance. Intelligent Power Management is now integrated into all of Adaptecs high-performance, award-winning Series 5 and Series 2 Unified Serial™ RAID controllers.

Accessed through Adaptec Storage Manager™ software, Intelligent Power Management supports both SATA and SAS drives and is ideal for applications with large blocks of idle time, such as disk-to-disk backup, e-mail archiving and file and print servers. It allows drives to be operated in three power states: 1) Normal operation: full power, full RPM (revolutions per minute); 2) Standb: low-power mode that spins disks at lower RPM during idle periods; and 3) Power-off: disks not spinning. In addition, blackout periods can be set in which power management features are disabled, such as during peak IT activity periods.

IT managers can configure banks of disk drives to operate in different power states at varying times, and automate the drives to spin up and down according to drive usage patterns.

When drives are accessed during pre-configured spin-down to Standby or Power-off modes, Intelligent Power Management quickly and automatically powers these drives back up, as needed, so performance is not impacted. Also, the Adaptec RAID controller automatically monitors drives that have been powered down for an extended period of time to ensure systems are still fully operational, allowing Intelligent Power Management to help reduce drive failures and increase drive life expectancy.

“As global data storage needs grow dramatically, so does the need for even more high-performance disk drives. Disk drives consume about 33 percent of all the storage in an IT environment[2] and are one of the most energy-intensive components in any computing system,” said Suresh Panikar, director of worldwide marketing, Adaptec. “With Intelligent Power Management, we are expanding the capabilities of our RAID controllers to address this issue. The cost and energy savings achieved with Intelligent Power Management are enormous – potentially several hundred thousand dollars per year.”

Adaptec Inc.