May 11, 2007, 9:22 AM — For every eight terabytes (TB) of usable disk capacity within the storage infrastructure, there is the potential to generate a million dollars in operating expense (Opex) savings, according to a 'storage economics' whitepaper.
While a number of enterprises have been able to generate a million dollar Opex saving with five or six terabytes of storage, the A$1 million (US$830,000) to 8TB ratio is a conservative figure over a three year term.
Based on hundreds of storage ROI exercises across the globe, whitepaper author David Merrill identifies potential savings through new storage architectures.
Merrill identifies pooled storage architecture as one opportunity as it requires fewer people to manage technology using network-connected storage and fewer storage pools.
"The net effect is that fewer people are needed to manage more storage in the future; human resources remains the single highest data center cost," he said.
"SANs and newer-generation storage provide higher data storage uptime when compared to locally attached disk and SCSI connections."
Merrill said networked storage is up to 60 percent cheaper than the same sized DAS environment based on a 2TB system.
He said this is due to improved disk utilization and reduced tape drives.
The paper recommends storage and server consolidation combined with virtualization pointing out that storage consolidation can reduce the number of Windows and Unix servers for CFIS or NFS-mounted storage.
It estimates that 10 percent of the Unix or Windows servers in a data center are used only for disk-access purposes.
"With SAN and NAS converged solutions these servers can be eliminated," Merrill said.
Merrill also recommends the introduction of a storage chargeback system for end users.
"Chargeback schemes drive proper behavior of storage locations [tiers] that are based on service levels and price points; with chargeback mechanisms all data types will not be delivered and engineered in the same manner," he said.
Documentation is also important, according to Merrill, as certified strategies discourage rogue technologies and point solutions.
Interestingly, many of the recommendations are geared toward the greening of the data center, according to Tim Smith, A/New Zealand marketing manager at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).
For example, newer generation storage systems take up less floor space and lower power and cooling costs.
"The greening of the data center is a positive by-product of reducing storage costs," Smith said adding that going green can actually generate a lot of green in the hip pocket.
"Warm and fuzzy will never drive the green agenda there needs to be tangible benefits like cost savings to get CIOs interested.
"As we know the data center is the most energy hungry and inefficient part of the business so there is plenty of low hanging fruit to leverage savings."
Smith said Hitachi has identified 29 cost saving conditions that can have a massive impact on reducing costs.
He believes up to 55 percent of all storage is redundant as organizations only need to keep two copies of a file, not six.
"As a result of our storage reviews organizations can start removing legacy infrastructure and won't have to buy capacity for 12 months," Smith said.
"A lot of organizations will have half a dozen storage devices they didn't even know existed; we usually find about eight NAS devices."
For some organizations, Smith said it can take up to 18 months to deinstall an array.
"The goal is to use what you have more efficiently and by doing this organizations can reduce energy consumption by up to 40 percent," he added.
Each year Australians emit more than 550 million tons of greenhouse gases and IT is one of the worst offenders.
As a result environmental practices are likely to play an increasingly central role in reshaping the data center in 2007 and beyond.
While some businesses are planting trees to offset carbon emissions or debating the introduction of a carbon tax, Smith said the most significant way to fix a data centers carbon footprint is to reduce equipment and leverage new technologies.
Hitachi has its own green policy which has reduced the company's carbon footprint by 120,000 tons annually over the past five years.
A Forrester Research report to be released next week supports claims by Hitachi's Smith that businesses will not adopt a green strategy without real cost benefits.
The Forrester survey of 124 IT procurement executives asked how receptive IT buyers are to "buying green."
Only a quarter of respondents had formalized a green criteria in the IT procurement process with many saying it's still a business decision.
