July 2, 2009 -- What will your refrigerator soon have in common with your storage array? It's not the crisper drawer. Well, not yet anyway. Someone could roll out a new unified SAN/NAS/Frigidaire system that stores your data and your produce. I guess anything is possible. What I'm talking about is the Energy Star program.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun work on a specification framework that will ultimately result in an energy efficiency program for enterprise storage systems. Translation: Energy Star stickers will eventually appear on your favorite storage devices.
Not to pat myself on the back, but this humble reporter predicted an Energy Star program for enterprise storage products a while back. I just didn't think it would take this long.
The specification is in draft form, but the EPA needs a little help with developing the framework. For example, David Floyer raises a key issue in his Wikibon blog. The EPA isn't considering software. He writes:
"Action Item: EPA should include software functionality in its specification for achieving Energy Star. This would allow a far more aggressive energy savings to be set as a standard for Energy Star certification. The vendor should be given the choice of how to achieve these energy savings against the base of a storage array with no software and poor power supplies. This approach will achieve higher levels of savings and enhance the EPA energy star brand."
Last call for comments on the Energy Star Enterprise Storage Draft Specification Framework is tomorrow, July 3. The Wikibon folks are currently collecting and consolidating reader feedback and plan to submit its collective opinion by the end of the week. Get in on the conversation here.
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