SNIA Developer Conference September 15-17, 2025 | Santa Clara, CA
AI's Environmental Storage Problem: Pioneering Architectures that Achieve a 90% Carbon Footprint Reduction
Abstract
As the demand for cloud storage continues to grow, current centralized infrastructures are causing a detrimental impact on the environment. The cloud's carbon footprint has already surpassed that of the airline industry, but the recent surge in demand for AI is exacerbating the problem. Innovative storage solutions that reduce emissions without sacrificing performance and availability are needed now more than ever. In this session, we will delve into the technical aspects of how Storj is addressing this critical issue through an advanced distributed storage model. This approach eliminates the need for constructing additional, emission-intensive data centers by leveraging under-utilized disk drives from its network of 23,000+ active nodes worldwide. The result is a highly secure, high-performance cloud storage solution that meets the storage requirements for big data and AI, with a significantly reduced environmental impact. As a senior software engineer at Storj, I will share my technical expertise in developing and implementing distributed cloud object storage that outperforms AWS S3 in both price and speed while maintaining global performance, privacy, and sustainability. A key element of Storj's green enterprise-grade cloud solution is its robust security measures for distributed models. By employing end-to-end encryption, file splitting, and distribution across a vast global network of nodes, Storj ensures resilience against ransomware attacks and enables users to access their files from the closest node to their location. This approach significantly improves file uploading, downloading, and streaming across organizations at scale. Attendees of the Storage Developer Conference 2023 will gain valuable insights into the power of distributed storage, its zero-trust capabilities, and the potential for harnessing under-utilized disk drives from existing data centers. This innovative approach can prevent the cloud's carbon footprint from further expanding, as current energy consumption levels are equivalent to powering 50,000 homes per data center. To meet growing customer demands without exacerbating the cloud's already alarming carbon footprint, the future of cloud storage must embrace a distributed model. Join us in exploring this pioneering architecture that has the potential to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon emissions while ensuring performance, security, and sustainability from a technical perspective.
Learning Objectives
- Cutting back on carbon emissions by using underutilized disk-drives
- The benefits of streaming and sharing content across thousands of nodes globally
- Enhancing security and creating cloud resiliency to ransomware attacks
- Overall cost, sustainability, and performance benefits of a distributed model
Related Sessions
Sustainability Opportunities for Cloud Storage
As Cloud industry gears up towards attacking Climate Change – identifying the sources of carbon and other associated impacts is a needed first step to device a plan of action to further sustainability improvements. The cloud storage market is expected to exceed $390B by 2028; hence a key area of focus to reduce Data Center Climate Impact. As a leading force in the cloud solution sector, we recognize the environmental implications. It is our commitment to use this knowledge not just to acknowledge the challenge, but to forge innovative solutions and strategies to minimize our carbon footprint and maximize sustainable practices. In our journey towards a sustainable future, we believe that data center storage can be a part of the solution. The focus of this presentation is to highlight the biggest influencers for cloud Storage Sustainability and delve into the storage building blocks and component areas that are the key contributors to cloud storage carbon footprint. The presentation will spotlight areas for industry to focus on to make a positive impact on sustainability from a Microsoft’s perspective.
AI's Environmental Storage Problem: Pioneering Architectures that Achieve a 90% Carbon Footprint Reduction
As the demand for cloud storage continues to grow, current centralized infrastructures are causing a detrimental impact on the environment. The cloud's carbon footprint has already surpassed that of the airline industry, but the recent surge in demand for AI is exacerbating the problem. Innovative storage solutions that reduce emissions without sacrificing performance and availability are needed now more than ever. In this session, we will delve into the technical aspects of how Storj is addressing this critical issue through an advanced distributed storage model. This approach eliminates the need for constructing additional, emission-intensive data centers by leveraging under-utilized disk drives from its network of 23,000+ active nodes worldwide. The result is a highly secure, high-performance cloud storage solution that meets the storage requirements for big data and AI, with a significantly reduced environmental impact. As a senior software engineer at Storj, I will share my technical expertise in developing and implementing distributed cloud object storage that outperforms AWS S3 in both price and speed while maintaining global performance, privacy, and sustainability. A key element of Storj's green enterprise-grade cloud solution is its robust security measures for distributed models. By employing end-to-end encryption, file splitting, and distribution across a vast global network of nodes, Storj ensures resilience against ransomware attacks and enables users to access their files from the closest node to their location. This approach significantly improves file uploading, downloading, and streaming across organizations at scale. Attendees of the Storage Developer Conference 2023 will gain valuable insights into the power of distributed storage, its zero-trust capabilities, and the potential for harnessing under-utilized disk drives from existing data centers. This innovative approach can prevent the cloud's carbon footprint from further expanding, as current energy consumption levels are equivalent to powering 50,000 homes per data center. To meet growing customer demands without exacerbating the cloud's already alarming carbon footprint, the future of cloud storage must embrace a distributed model. Join us in exploring this pioneering architecture that has the potential to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon emissions while ensuring performance, security, and sustainability from a technical perspective.