NetApp Talks Power Savings

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Powering the data center has quickly become one of the top issues that enterprises are facing today. In a recent survey of NetApp customers, 59% indicated a serious focus on addressing power consumption, with 46% already making investments. Today, Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP - News) unveiled its plan to help customers deploy leading-edge data management techniques to reduce their data center power consumption.

"We're seeing an increasing number of customers constrained by the physical limits of their data centers: they can't add more power, they're running out of space, and they can't add more cooling," said Chris Bennett, vice president, Core Systems, NetApp. "While the issue of power consumption is certainly gaining a lot of attention in the server environment, customers are now looking beyond servers to other major consumers of data center power, and storage is certainly one of them. We believe that if more focus is put on getting increased work out of fewer disks while enabling widespread use of higher-capacity and lower-power disks, NetApp can help customers dramatically reduce power consumption."

Explosive data growth is a reality for most data centers and a major concern for IT managers. To address data storage needs, the simple solution has been for IT managers to add more disks to existing storage systems, resulting in a proliferation of poorly utilized storage. As storage density increases, however, so do power demands and cooling concerns. As a result, this approach only adds to the power equation, causing many data centers to reach capacity limits with floor space, power, and cooling infrastructures.

In addition, many existing power-saving technologies fail to adequately address the main drivers behind power growth, focusing mainly on decreasing overall energy costs. The NetApp approach, however, is to halt power growth at its source by providing solutions that reduce raw storage and enable customers to do more with the storage systems already in their IT environments. Today, customers can take advantage of NetApp technology to subtract machines and disks, reduce the overall data center footprint, and maximize storage utilization. This approach not only helps IT organizations achieve greater power efficiency but also lowers infrastructure complexity and costs while enabling customers to better respond to new business demands.

"We needed to make changes to our IT infrastructure to reduce power consumption levels and still maintain the responsiveness and high availability that our 15,000 international clients demand," said NetApp customer Phil Nail, founder and chief technology officer of AISO.Net, a Web-hosting service provider. AISO.Net is the first and only public data center that is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. "Our initial requirement was redundancy for systems backup, but we also needed a solution that would allow us to continue to grow without adding to the 100 servers and storage systems already in our environment or increasing our electricity or cooling needs."Network Appliance Inc.