SNIA Green Storage Initiative Formed to Advance Energy Efficient Storage Networking Solutions

Also at SNW Fall, the SNIA announced its Green Storage Initiative (GSI), dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked storage technologies, which will help minimize the environmental impact of data storage operations.

One of the first activities of the GSI was to spearhead the SNIA's participation in an important Climate Change Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, held Nov. 27-28, 2007. With more than 500 technology specialists and management executives from business, government, and academia in attendance, Dr. Erik Riedel, SNIA Technical Council Member, served as the moderator of an expert panel at the conference on "Redefining the Efficient Data Center: Energy, the Environment and Sound Business Practice."

The GSI's scope of work will span 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 opportunity and the role that networked storage plays within a data center's overall energy consumption, top storage vendors have joined the SNIA GSI, which will complement the work of the SNIA's Green Storage Technical Work Group.

As part of its activity, the SNIA GSI will be developing tutorials and educational material, white papers, and best practices for energy efficient data center storage operations. Work will include helping member companies design more energy efficient products, investigating specific technologies such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning and tape-based archiving, as well as providing education that can help contribute to energy efficiency.

The GSI 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 on the SNIA Green Initiative and how to join, please visit www.snia.org/green.