Reducing Data Center Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions with Modern Tape

 

Reducing carbon emissions is a significant global challenge. Many companies have decided they must incorporate carbon reductions into their strategies and have announced green initiatives. Data centers are a significant consumer of electricity. One opportunity for reducing energy consumption and resulting carbon emissions is moving inactive data from disk storage to tape storage. Industry analysts estimate that 60% of the data stored on disk storage is infrequently accessed.  We estimate that by moving 10 PB of "cold data" that is growing 35% annually from disk to tape storage, an 87% reduction in carbon emission and an 86% reduction in TCO can be achieved over ten years. IT organizations have a significant opportunity to achieve meaningful carbon emissions reductions while lowering operational and capital expenses.The whitepaper can be accessed at this link.

An Innovative Approach to Managing the Digital Data Explosion

Today’s Information Technology organizations are experiencing unprecedented growth of digital data. Industry analysts are projecting growth rates as high as 40% annually. There are a variety of sources for this growth, and it varies by industry. The cost-effective management and protection of such large quantities of data present significant challenges to information technology management. Many organizations have implemented a strategy to archive object storage for less frequently accessed data to help meet this challenge.  As less frequently accessed data continues to grow (analyst project that 80% of data is cold), companies can continue to purchase more object storage and/or opt to move data to the cloud.  Purchasing additional object storage may not work with tightened IT budgets, and any cost savings achieved by moving data to the cloud is often mitigated or worsened if any of that data is recalled.

Fujifilm’s recently announced Object Archive Solution is an innovative approach to this challenge. Instead of purchasing more object storage and/or sending object data to the cloud, the data is packaged and stored locally on an automated tape library. The Object Archive Solution presents an S3-compatible interface to the object management layer and then packs the objects into a new, open format called the OTFormat. These objects are then written to a tape library. It is like having cloud storage but in your data center. The local storage of the objects eliminates any costs associated with the restoration of data from the cloud.  It is scalable, and avoids any compliance or regulatory issues with saving confidential data in the cloud.  It also stores the objects on the lowest cost storage available today, tape.   The off-line nature of tape (the air gap) not only mitigates but eliminates any risk of cyberthreats.

Fujifilm has also taken an innovative approach to the packaging of the solution.  Object Archive is offered as a subscription-based on the amount of data stored and the term of the license.  In addition to the software, the subscription includes support and enough tape media for two copies of the data.  For more information on this innovative solution, go to this link:   Fujifilm Object Archive

Reflections on Storage Technology Showcase 2020

In early March, before conferences of all types across the country shut down and social distancing was mandated, I was sitting in a conference room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, attending the Storage Technology Showcase 2020 and it struck me, I was surrounded by power users. Many of the participants were storage users who push the capabilities of data storage technology to the limit. Every industry has power users; in the automotive industry, it is those that demand the fastest and highest performing cars. Think of NASCAR or the 24 hours of Le Mans. The drivers push race cars to their limits. For data storage, the power users for storage are the organizations that perform high-performance computing.  

Several of the presentations were from storage managers at supercomputing centers that performed research in energy and weather systems. They highlighted the demanding storage environments for high-performance computing. In practice, this means a lot of flash, a lot of disk, and massive quantities of tape connected via high-speed networks. For example, to support the existing Cray XC-40 and coming Perlmutter supercomputers, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) 2020 storage architecture includes more than 30 PB of flash, 340 PB of disk, and .5 EB of tape storage. 

One of the themes of the conference was the importance of tape storage in cost-effectively managing massive amounts of archive data. For example, the European Centre for medium-range weather forecasts (ECMWF) has over 450 PB of archive data stored on tape and adds another 260 TB/Day. At these capacity points, tape storage is essential not only for financial reasons but also for other features: volumetric efficiency, a long media life and energy savings.

A surprising presentation was Western Digital Corporation’s “Tape to the future presentation." While most of us think of WDC as an HDD and Flash company, the presentation highlighted the potential of dramatic growth in the amount of data stored on tape in the coming decade. This growth will be driven by the growth of archive data in hyperscale data centers. To meet these needs, several cost, packaging, performance, and storage architecture requirements were suggested.

  

The final theme that several presentations touched on was the challenge of migrating storage infrastructure to new technology while maintaining service levels. Migrations present a host of challenges, and different approaches were taken due to widely differing environments and history. Given the substantial amounts of data stored and the value of the information, a great deal of planning was done, and the migration process spanned months, or even years.  

Overall, it was a very informative conference with a wealth of real-world user case studies and information on storage technology from important suppliers. The conference agenda and presentations can be found here: STS2020.  While the digital data explosion continues, technology is rapidly evolving to help organizations manage the challenge effectively.