SNIA Releases Storage Power Efficiency Specs

Energy-conscious IT managers will be able to run their storage more efficienctly, thanks to specifications published as part of a green movement from within the storage industry.

The Storage Networking Industry Association Europe (SNIA Europe) has published specifications for its Emerald storage efficiency programme, launched last year. The idea is to give users a vendor-neutral procedure to test the power efficiency of their storage systems. The association also plans to store measured data for users to compare products.

Four elements in a nutshell

The Emerald specification includes a taxonomy of the different categories of storage, a test methodology which describes how to test them consistently, along with test metrics for both idle and power-up testing.

“It is important for the industry at-large to have insight, awareness and agreement on how to best measure a storage device’s energy effectiveness to support a given usage scenario,” said Greg Schulz of StorageIO. “The SNIA has done significant prep work and test measurement validation. In addition, the SNIA Emerald Program is providing storage providers and IT consumers a consistent and structured framework to review and evaluate the test results.”

Storage system manufacturers and industry testing labs can download the SNIA specs, along with a guide to setting up a test and measurement environment, and submitting results to  SNIA.

to get the programme started, SNIA members HP and IBM have both submitted test results for their respective storage systems.