Service-oriented storage: Hitachi strategy puts midrange power savings front and center

Hitachi Data Systems , an exclusive provider of what it calls Services-Oriented Storage Solutions, recently enhanced its midrange storage-system lineup to address rising energy costs, looming energy surcharges, data-center and floor-space consumption, and the need for heightened security across IT deployments.
As part of Hitachi’s service-oriented strategy, a new Power Savings capability for the Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) and Workgroup Modular Storage (WMS) midrange line-up can be invoked by clients or applications as a storage service on an as-needed basis. The new Power Savings Storage Service enables customers to power down volumes (disks) when not being accessed by a business application. The volumes can then be powered up quickly when the application requires them.
“By introducing the ability to spin drives up and down according to application needs, Hitachi significantly reduced power and cooling requirements,” says Dave Vellante, CEO of CIO consultancy Barometrix (formerly ITCentrix) . “Our models show this approach is especially effective in back-up and archive environments, and can lower power and cooling costs by more than 20 percent relative to traditional modular arrays. With this announcement, Hitachi continues to demonstrate innovation and its leadership in green storage.”
The Power Savings Storage Service enables companies to reduce energy consumption, which can significantly reduce the cost of storing and delivering information. This storage service is particularly appealing to customers with large archived data or virtual tape library applications where the data is accessed infrequently or for a limited period of time. It also is very effective for volumes assigned for backups or for disk capacity that has been installed but has yet to be allocated.
The Power Savings Storage Service reduces the number of kilowatt hours a storage array consumes and contributes to reducing cooling costs within a data center or distributed computing environment. In keeping with the Hitachi commitment to environmental responsibility without compromising availability or reliability, the Power Savings Storage Service will be available on SATA and Fibre Channel disk drives on Hitachi’s AMS and WMS systems.

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