Figure 1 shows energy consumption in a typical data center. The chart breaks out energy consumed by IT equipment (e.g. servers, storage and networking) as compared to other data center infrastructure (e.g. cooling, power distribution, lighting, etc). IT equipment only consumes about half of the energy in a data center-- the rest is expended to support other infrastructure installed to power and cool technology gear.

Wikibon estimates that storage accounts for between 10-15% of the total energy consumed in the data center, but significantly more if you allocate the IT equipment back over the supporting infrastructure.

Figure 1: Energy Consumption for Data Center Equipment

Figure 2 shows energy consumed by storage components within the storage system. It's clear the majority of the power, 80% is consumed by spinning disk.

Figure 2: Storage Component Energy Consumption

Action Item: By attacking energy consumed from technology gear, IT and facilities managers gain the advantage of lowering the energy requirements for supporting infrastructure. While focusing on PDU and CRAC units is appealing, they only address about half the problem.

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