Data Storage Energy Efficiency in the Zettabyte Era
Main Article Content
Keywords
Data Storage
Abstract
Data storage has become an increasingly significant issue with the widespread availability of cheap storage technology and the development of global data centres for cloud storage. This paper reports a study of energy consumption for data storage in data centres. Unlike previous estimates, which have been extrapolations of broad energy usage within the data centre, we take a bottom-up approach. Firstly, we describe the technologies that can be used for data storage. Then we build up a model of energy consumption in data centres based on tiers of data storage. Based on published forecasts of data storage growth and assumptions about improving energy efficiency in technology and data centres, we then estimate the energy consumption for data storage in data centres in 2020. We show that energy consumption will rise substantially if a “business as usual” approach is adopted. We further show that the growth in energy consumption can be mitigated somewhat by adopting a more aggressive policy of data archiving on long-term, low-energy, “cold” storage; or more ideally purging data of little or no future value. This, however, would require a change in the popular assumption that data will be available readily online and forever.
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References
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Electronista. 2013. Western Digital ships first helium-filled 6TB 3.5-inch hard drives, http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/11/04/new.drives.increase.data.density.lower.operating.temperatures/, retrieved August 8, 2014.
EMC. 2012. EMC, VNX and Energy Efficiency, EMC Whitepaper – Marca51h 2012, available at http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h10525-vnx-energy-efficiencies-wp.pdf, retrieved August 8, 2014.
EMC. 2014. EMC Digital Universe Study, Interactive Report with research and analysis by IDC – April 9, 2014, http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/index.htm, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Gartner. 2012. Gartner Says the Personal Cloud Will Replace the Personal Computer as the Center of Users' Digital Lives by 2014, Gartner Newsroom - Press Release March 12, 2012, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1947315, retrieved August 8, 2014.
GeSI. 2012. Smarter 2020: The Role of ICT in Driving a Sustainable Future, GeSI Report published December, 2012, http://gesi.org/SMARTer2020, retrieved August 8, 2014.
HGST. 2013. HGST Ships 6TB Ultrastar He6 Helium-filled Drives for High-density, Massive Scale-out Data Center Environments – Press Release November 4, 2013, http://www.hgst.com/press-room/press-releases/hgst-ships-6TB-Ultrastar-HE6-helium-filled#sthash.jrL54MC3.dpuf, retrieved August 8, 2014.
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IDC. 2011b. The 2011 IDC Digital Universe Study, IDC paper sponsored by EMC ? June 2011, http://www.emc.com/collateral/about/news/idc-emc-digital-universe-2011-infographic.pdf.
IDC. 2014a. The Digital Universe of Opportunities: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of the Internet of Things (#IDC_1672), IDC Whitepaper sponsored by EMC ? April, 2014.
IDC. 2014b. New Possibilities for Tape Storage in the Age of Cloud and Big Data, IDC paper sponsored by Fujifilm ? February 2014. http://www.fujifilmusa.com/products/tape_data_storage/case_studies/pdf/IDC_WP_New_Possibilities_for_Tape_Storage.pdf
Komorowski, Matthew. 2014. A History of Storage Cost (update), http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte-update, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Koomey, J.G. 2011. Growth in data center electricity use 2005 to 2010, http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Lambrechts, Jan. 2014. ‘Information Lifecycle Governance (ILG): Maximise data value, reduce data growth, cost and risk’. Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Vol 2 No 3.
Latamore, Bert. 2012. Five Tier Storage Model, http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Five_Tier_Storage_Model, retrieved July 30, 2014.
Merian, Lucas. 2013. New hard drive tech will help Seagate crack 5TB barrier in 2014, 20TB in 2020, http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048586/new-hard-drive-tech-will-help-seagate-crack-5tb-barrier-in-2014-20tb-in-2020.html, retrieved July 28, 2014.
Seagate. 2014a. Seagate Storage & Application Guide, Seagate Technology Whitepaper - February 18, 2014, http://searchstorage.rl.techtarget.com.au/detail/RES/1392289185_291.html, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Seagate. 2014b. Seagate Ships World's Fastest 6TB Drive For Scale-out, Cloud-based Data Centers ? Press Release April 7, 2014, http://www.seagate.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/Seagate-ships-worlds-fastest-6TB-drive-enterprise-capacity-pr-master/, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Seagate. 2014c. Seagate 1200 SSD Data Sheet, http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/ssd-fam/1200-ssd/en-us/docs/1200-ssd-ds1781-4-1310us.pdf, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Seagate. 2014d. Seagate Ships World’s First 8TB Hard Drives ? Press Release August 26, 2014, http://www.seagate.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/Seagate-ships-worlds-first-8TB-hard-drives-pr-master/, retrieved September 8, 2014.
SGI. 2010. Enterprise MAID Quick Reference Guide ? Published 2010. http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4213.pdf retrieved August 8, 2014.
StorageNewsletter. 2014a. Panasonic and Sony Define Archival WORM Disc at 300GB ? March 12, 2014. http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/optical/panasonic-and-sony-define-archival-worm-disc-at-300gb/, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Storage Review. 2014. Seagate Enterprise Turbo SSHD Review, Storage Review Enterprise Lab ? February 14, 2014, http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_enterprise_turbo_sshd_review, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Uptime Institute. 2013. 2013 Data Center Industry Survey, available at http://uptimeinstitute.com/2013-survey-results (subscription required), retrieved August 10, 2014.
Van Heddeghem, W, Lambert, S, Lannoo, B, Colle, D, Pickavet, M, Demeester, P. 2014. Trends in worldwide ICT electricity consumption from 2007 to 2012, Computer Communications Journal 50 (2014) 64-76, http://www.internet-science.eu/publication/789, retrieved August 8, 2014.
Walter, Chip. 2005. ‘Kryder’s Law’. Scientific American, August. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kryders-law/, retrieved July 28, 2014.
Zwolenski, Matt & Weatherill, Lee. 2014. ‘The Digital Universe: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of the Internet of Things’, Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Universe, Vol 2 No 3.
Article Sidebar
Published
May 26, 2020
Article Details
How to Cite
Hormann, P. ., & Campbell, L. . (2020). Data Storage Energy Efficiency in the Zettabyte Era. Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 2(3), 22. https://doi.org/10.18080/jtde.v2n3.282
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Section
Telecommunications
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