Originating Author: David Floyer
This research review is to support the peer incite meeting on Green Storage 10/30/2007.
Contents |
Green Storage Initiative - Agenda
- Why we are here
- What we did
- What we found – High-end
- What we found – Modular
- Storage Power Urban Legends
- Storage Environmental Projections
- Green Storage Initiative
- Discussion
Why We’re Here
- Last winter, a number of Wikibon users vocalized that there was an absence of good metrics from vendors and the industry;
- Goal 1: Education - Engage Wikibon users to help storage stakeholders understand relationships between spending and storage environmentals
- Goal 2: Convention - Evolve existing methodologies to quantify storage environmentals and introduce the notions of workload, performance and technology directions
- Goal 3: Green Storage Initiative - Determine how to set about implementing a green storage initiative
What We Did
- Agreed Tier-1 and Tier-2 “paper benchmarks”
- Configured range of industry high-end systems against the Tier-1 benchmark
- Configured range of industry high-end storage to run both the Tier-1 and Tier-2 storage
- Configured range of industry modular storage systems against the Tier-2 benchmarks
- Configured application appliance with virtualization
- Compared environment costs:
- Tier-1 applications
- Tier-1 and Tier-2 applications on high-end
- Tier-1 on high-end and Tier-2 on modular
- Tier-2 on Modular
- Tier-2 on Modular with external virtualization appliance
- Included full power, cooling & space costs
Does Storage Matter?
- Yes-- storage accounts for approximately 15%-20% of power consumption in the data center (including internal storage)
- Environmentals as a % of total cost of ownership = ~25-30% in T1 and T2 workloads.
What We Found for High-end Storage
- Five year total environmental costs average:
- $3,154/TB for high-end Tier-1 storage;
- Overall 5 Year TCO (including maint.) = ~$12,500 for T1
- $1,727/TB for Tier-1/Tier-2 mixed storage;
- Overall 5 Year TCO (including maint.) = ~$7,000 for T1/T2 mix
- $3,154/TB for high-end Tier-1 storage;
FYI:
- Heat loadings are low (<1KW/sq ft);
- Power from controllers dominate (>60%)
- Some advantage from virtualization of storage and thin provisioning from reduction in # of disks – overall 5% reduction in 5 year costs
What We Found for Modular Storage
- For Modular Storage (i.e. Tier-2):
- Five year total environmental costs are about $750/TB
- Overall five year TCO (including maint.) = ~$3,000/TB
- Five year total environmental costs are about $750/TB
FYI:
- Heat loadings are low (<1KW/sq ft)
- Small advantage (~5%) from Virtualization of storage from reduction in # of disks
Storage Power Urban Legends
- Legend: The type of disk matters
- Reality: A disk is a disk is a disk (sort of)
- Varies between 10 watts/drive (idle) and 22 Watts (fastest fully active)
- Average of 17 Watts (difficult to change except by turning off the disk)
- This statement is true within a capacity range...obviously there are difference across capacity ranges.
- Reality: A disk is a disk is a disk (sort of)
- Legend: The drives are the main source of power consumption
- Reality: This is true sometimes but not always
- Reality: High-end controllers take 60% of power for real-world configurations
- Controller takes ~39% of mid-range modular storage
- Virtualization and thin provisioning will make the percentage higher (for modular increases it from 39% to 58%)
- Over time controller will continue to increase its % contribution to power and power density
- Legend: Virtualization is a major saving of power
- Reality: Virtualization saves ~5% of power
- Appliance/controller takes resources
- Thin provisioning similar
- Reality: Virtualization saves ~5% of power
- Legend: MAID (or other technologies that turn disk off) will be a major source of power saving
- Reality: MAID will save nothing on high-end storage and most modular storage
- Wide-striping and virtualization spread application I/Os over multiple disks
- Only specific identifiable applications that can be scheduled are likely to benefit
- Reality: MAID will save nothing on high-end storage and most modular storage
- Legend: 2.5” disk technology will significantly reduce disk power consumption
- Re