Originally posted by: TonyPearson
Jon W Toigo over at Drunkendata has had a great set of posts on his skepticism of storage vendors touting their "green storage" solutions. My apologies for my
"unnecessary" use of quotation marks.
The ones I liked specifically were:
The last of which refers to this ComputerWorld article "EPA: U.S. needs more power plants to support data centers", which claims "from a technology perspective, the systems most responsible for gobbling up power are the relatively low-cost x86 servers ..." The article is based onthe recent EPA report that was just released.
Last month, in my post How manys Watts per Terabyte, I mentioned:
Some people find it surprising that it is often more cost-effective, and power-efficient, to run workloads on mainframe logical partitions (LPARs) than a stack of x86 servers running VMware.
Perhaps they won't be surprised any more. Here is an article in eWeek that explains how IBM isreducing energy costs 80% by consolidating 3,900 rack-optimized servers to 33 IBM System z mainframe servers, running Linux, in its own data centers. Since 1997, IBM has consolidated its 155 strategic worldwide data center locations down to just seven.
I am very pleased that IBM has invested heavily into Linux, with support across servers, storage, software andservices. Linux is allowing IBM to deliver clever, innovative solutions that may not be possible with other operating systems. If you are in storage, you should consider becoming more knowledgeable in Linux.
The older systems won't just end up in a landfill somewhere. Instead, the details are spelled out inthe IBM Press Release:
As part of the effort to protect the environment, IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, the refurbishment and recycling unit of IBM, will process and properly dispose of the 3,900 reclaimed systems. Newer units will be refurbished and resold through IBM's sales force and partner network, while older systems will be harvested for parts or sold for scrap. Prior to disposition, the machines will be scrubbed of all sensitive data. Any unusable e-waste will be properly disposed following environmentally compliant processes perfected over 20 years of leading environmental skill and experience in the area of IT asset disposition.
Whereas other vendors might think that some operational improvements will be enough, such as switching to higher-capacity SATA drives, or virtualizing x86 servers, IBM recognizes that sometimes more fundamental changes are required to effect real changes and real results.
technorati tags: Jon Toigo, Drunkendata, power, consumption, disk, systems, green, storage, Linux, consolidation, virtualization, recovery, services, landfill, SATA, x86, servers, eWeek, mainframe