SPC Issues Benchmark on Storage Energy Use

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., - June 3, 2009 - The Storage Performance Council (SPC) today announced the public availability of SPC Benchmark 1C/E??? (SPC-1C/E), the first industry-standard storage benchmark that includes measurement and reporting of energy use in addition to storage performance. As an extension to SPC Benchmark 1C (SPC-1C) for storage components, SPC-1C/E utilizes the SPC-1C workload and incorporates the complete set of SPC-1C performance measurements and reporting. Storage end-users, resellers and integrators now have an objective, verifiable tool to accurately collect and compare data for energy use measurements for their small storage subsystem configurations. "This is a very big deal for businesses seeking to add energy use as part of their objective and verified benchmark results under realistic work loads," said Brian Garrett, technical director, Enterprise Strategy Group Laboratories. "Industry-standard performance analysis tools and metrics give customers a clearly applicable, vendor-neutral process to accurately compare and configure various storage technologies, and this important development is destined to boost the evolution of the green data center." In addition to the "core" SPC-1C performance measurement and reporting requirements, the SPC-1C/E benchmark extension defines:* Two states of benchmark execution, idle and active (performance) * Multiple idle phases to demonstrate power management/savings features * Configuration and instrumentation requirements for energy use measurement * Execution requirements for idle state measurements * The transition into active (performance) state measurements * Data collection requirements for energy use measurements * Expanded disclosure and audit requirements to address the new energy use measurements and reported data "In today's energy-conscious world, SPC-1C/E reported data will address the needs of end-users wishing to make energy-aware purchasing decisions as well as those of storage solution providers anxiously awaiting a reliable method to measure the effectiveness of their green initiatives," said Walter E. Baker, administrator for the Storage Performance Council. "SPC-1C/E offers both groups a powerful tool that provides objective, relevant, and verifiable performance and energy use data in an easy-to-use manner." In conjunction with today's release of the SPC-1C/E benchmark extension, the first SPC-1C/E Results have been submitted by IBM Corporation and Seagate Technology LLC. The IBM SPC1C/E Result featured the IBM System Storage EXP12S with Solid State Drive (SSD) technology [1]. The Seagate SPC1C/E Result featured small form factor, energy efficient Seagate Savvio 10K.3 drives [2]. About the SPC The SPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define, standardize and promote storage benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable storage performance data to the computer industry and its customers. The organization's strategic objectives are to empower storage vendors to build better products as well as to stimulate the IT community to more rapidly trust and deploy multi-vendor storage technology. The SPC membership consists of a broad cross-section of the storage industry. A complete SPC membership roster is available at http://www.storageperformance.org/about/roster/. For more information about SPC-1C/E visit http://www.storageperformance.org .