St. Patrick’s Day is no longer the only occasion for going green. When it comes to addressing your data storage requirements these days, you’ll want to go as green as possible. After all, everyone is thinking eco-friendly, from hybrid cars to canvas grocery bags while recycling wherever and whenever possible. This same kind of responsibility to our planet has more and more companies demanding sustainable data storage solutions from their vendors and partners.
The reasoning and results are undeniable; sustainable data storage helps companies’ better meet demands for business continuity and compliance. Further, relying on energy-efficient hardware is not only eco-friendly but budget friendly also. As the price of fuel soars, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that from 2000 to 2006, the compounded average growth rate of electricity use from electronic data storage increased 20 percent—outpacing site infrastructure and networking equipment. According to the Uptime Institute, the yearly cost to power one server will rise from $95 in 2006 to $1,445 by 2012.
With typical data storage increasing 60 percent a year, no company can afford to be without an energy-efficient data storage strategy. So where to begin? Here are a few tips:
• Look for vendors and partners that use only the latest in energy-efficient technologies, such as data deduplication and compression.
• Internally implement green strategies, which may include data consolidation or moving to networked or virtualized storage.
• When appropriate, purchase equipment containing energy-efficient components, such as high capacity disk drives (e.g., SATA) that will conserve data storage and electricity usage.
Products from Overland Storage, such as our REO 9500D deduplicating VTL appliance and REO models with hardware compression take full advantage of eco-friendly features that increase disk capacity while using less power and producing less heat. This will translate to noticeable energy savings. These appliances also are RoHS compliant and don’t contain heavy metals, which increases storage efficiency and optimizes power consumption.
In particular, Overland’s REO 9500D can help any data center go green with increased retention of backup data on disk. Utilizing highly-efficient data deduplication software, the REO 9500D can dramatically increase storage capacity while reducing data volumes. The REO 9500D also can be configured as multiple VTLs, allowing fast and efficient backup to disk.
Additionally, Overland’s non-deduplicating VTLs include Dynamic Virtual Tape, basically thin provisioning for virtual tape, to maximize the utilization of available disk space. Any unused VTL space can be used for nearline storage.
Besides ensuring your data center gets greener, REO VTLs arrive ready to integrate without hassle. There’s no software to install, they are simply configured with the preferred VTL set-up with the easy-to-use configuration wizard. These eco-friendly, energy-efficient appliances are compatible with all major backup software and require no modifications to hosts or backup servers. So there’s no need to waste any time—or precious energy. Go green today!
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Jeff Graham
Senior Product Manager