November 19, 2007—The not-for-profit global organization Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) recently announced the formation of the SNIA Green Storage Initiative, which it says will be dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked storage technologies in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of data storage operations. The Initiative will cover all shared storage technologies including disk and tape systems, server connectivity, storage appliances, fabrics and other storage network infrastructure, file services, and storage applications
Realizing the role that networked storage plays within a data center’s overall energy consumption, many storage vendors have already joined the SNIA Green Storage Initiative, including: 3PAR, Brocade, COPAN Systems, Dell, EMC, EqualLogic, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Intransa, IBM, LSI, Microsoft, NetApp, QLogic, Seagate, Sun, Xiotech, and Xyratex.
The Initiative will be developing tutorials and educational material, white papers, and best practices for energy efficient data center storage operations. The group’s efforts will include helping member companies design more energy-efficient products; investigating specific technologies such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning, and tape-based archiving; and providing education that can help contribute to energy efficiency.
The Green Storage Initiative will also act as the SNIA liaison to other allied organizations such as The Green Grid and the EPA to collaborate on the development of more environmentally friendly data center solutions.
For more information visit the SNIA Green Initiative Web site.
