EMC adds flash-based solid state drives to its products lines.  Energy efficiency performance is their main selling points.

   

Because there are no mechanical components in flash drives, they require less power. In a storage array, flash drives can store a terabyte of data using 38 percent less energy than traditional mechanical disk drives. It would take 30 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel disk drives to deliver the same performance as a single flash drive, which translates into a dramatic 98 percent reduction in power consumption in a transaction-per-second comparison.

   

“For years, magnetic disk drive technology has defined performance boundaries for customers’ mission critical storage environments,” said David Donatelli, President, EMC Storage Division. “With this announcement, EMC has again revolutionized the storage industry. The introduction of flash drive technology builds on EMC’s long history of storage industry firsts, including the pioneering use of small form factor disk drives and ATA disk drives in enterprise storage systems. Then as now, EMC is helping customers gain a competitive advantage and tackle information challenges that no other vendor’s technology can.”

It's great to see EMC market this feature. I've been talking to some storage architects who have been looking at flash for performance, and telling them the opportunity is huge in that not only is it fast, but it is energy efficient which is key for a green data center.  Changes in storage systems are going to see some of the biggest changes in energy efficiency for 2008 as the rest of the industry focuses on storage power consumption.

Jon Stokes from Ars Technica reports on an IDC storage report, and adds his own comments in addition to the IDC's executive summary.

In a nutshell, the problem in the datacenter is the same as it ever was, but with a power-aware twist: backing store (in the form of hard disk arrays) is getting too slow and too hot, while demand rises and cost-per-bit plummets. So the answer is to add a little cache, in the form of flash memory.

From my own perspective, the case for SSDs in the enterprise seems pretty straightforward, built as it is on two constraints: latency and power. Latency comes into play when solid state memory is used as cache for a larger pool of magnetic backing store; such cache can improve response times for databases and Web-based apps.

The power factor is also compelling, though, especially in light of a recent Google study that shows the hard disk to be one of a server's most poorly power-optimized components. Large storage arrays from vendors like EMC suck up major wattage and throw off a ton of heat, so there's a huge and growing appetite for hardware and software technology that either makes more efficient use of storage or cuts down on the amount of times that drives must spin up. Flash-based caches can make it possible for drives to spin down during certain types of low load conditions (functionally an active sleep state), and that could make bimodal power optimization at least feasible for servers.

In the IT industry there is a perfect storm for server hardware innovation with multi-core processors, virtualization, power management, and 64 bit being delivered in high volume. Another component - storage is changing as well.  Here is one example of the changes coming in energy efficient storage besides SSD. 

SUNNYVALE and MILPITAS, Calif., Nov 14, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN), the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, and Virident Inc., an innovator focused on energy-efficient, scalable system solutions for the Internet data center, today announced the two companies will develop and market a new generation of memory solutions designed to dramatically reduce power consumption and provide excellent system performance in Internet data centers. Spansion also announced it has made an equity investment in Virident.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060118/SFW077LOGO)

This innovative partnership will combine the revolutionary Spansion(R) MirrorBit(R) Eclipse(TM) family with Virident platform technology to create a new generation of memory solutions. This breakthrough memory approach will enable a significant expansion of main system memory in data center servers. The new memory will incorporate specific optimizations for server applications to enable fast read performance and high capacity, yet consume much less energy than power-hungry DRAM. MirrorBit Eclipse Flash memory consumes as little as one-tenth the power of DRAM on a per-Gigabyte basis.

Today, major Internet companies select server infrastructure for the delivery of their services in an environment constrained by the power demands and cost curves of DRAM, and the slow response times of the hard disk. The Virident technology together with Spansion MirrorBit Eclipse Flash memory opens up the possibility of storing much larger datasets in main server memory, providing excellent overall system throughput while living within the power and cooling constraints of the Internet data center.

Not only does Validus get $10 million from VC for their DC power project to improve energy efficiency.  They get press coverage as well - news.com and ZDnet.  Does this sound like the dot com era brought to Green IT?

Pumping DC power to the data center

Posted by Martin LaMonica

Thomas Edison had it right, say the founders of start-up Validus DC Systems. Direct current is the way.

Validus

on Tuesday announced that it has raised $10 million from Oak Hill Venture Partners to further develop its data center power supplies that use direct current (DC) to lower power consumption. Products are expected to be released in late January next year.

By using direct current, rather than drawing electricity from outlets that supply alternating current, data center managers can reduce their energy consumption by up to 40 percent, according to the company.

There is a growing awareness of the cost and waste associated with electricity in data centers. Companies are also struggling to get enough electricity to power their gear.

ZDnet Blogs

One of the most promising technologies is whole datacenter DC power distribution. I just saw that Validus DC Systems announced today that it has raised $10 million from Oak Hill Venture Partners to further develop its data center power supplies that use direct current (DC). This isn’t a point solution: it requires that servers and other gear be converted to run on DC power.