October 30, 2009 – 11:07 am
It’s like HDTV.
First we had HD televisions without any content. Then we had some HD broadcasts, and some HD DVDs in the stores.
Then – inflection point! – all the pieces were there. TVs, DVRs, broadcast, DVDs, web content. The whole thing took off faster than you can say “Blockbuster fire sale”.
End-to-end 6Gb/s SAS has arrived
LSI, SuperMicro and Seagate demonstrated the 6Gb/s SAS equivalent. It’s just a matter of time before 3Gb SAS is a quaint relic of days gone by. This opens the 6G/s door wide for system builders too.
Seagate has 6Gb/s SAS available on the following products:
If you haven’t built 6Gb/s SAS into your plans, time to get crackin’.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in 10K/15K RPM, Products, Servers
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Tagged 6Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/sec SAS, analogy, Blockbuster, Cheetah 15K, constellation, Constellation ES, end-to-end, HDTV, inflection point, infrastructure, lsi, performance, SAS, savvio, Savvio 10K, Savvio 15K, Seagate, Supermicro
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August 12, 2009 – 8:56 am
Reducing data center power consumption is good for the planet and good for IT budgets. It can also mean extra cash.
PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) awarded Fortune Data Centers $900,000 for their energy efficiency enhancements in a San Jose, California data center.
This is stark evidence that one of the biggest challenges with IT energy consumption is a shortage of energy to consume. PG&E is willing to give a data center close to a million bucks in incentives because they don’t have enough power to go around. Power plants aren’t easily or quickly built.
Reducing electrical footprint with more efficient storage systems and servers is a foundational step to approach this issue. As a first step, check to make sure you are making maximum use of today’s most efficient enterprise storage devices, like the Seagate Constellation drive. Not all applications require the speediest (and highest power) devices.
Also check on your servers. Are you on a path to convert to the newer small form factor servers? They do the same thing as their older & bigger cousin with a lot less power. One way they do this is by using energy efficient 2.5″ enterprise disk drives like the Seagate Savvio drive.
Expect to see more “carrot” incentives from the energy infrastructure, as well as some ”sticks” as they run out of power. Either way, investment in a more efficient data center will pay off in a big way.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in 10K/15K RPM, Green IT, Trends, Uncategorized
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Tagged 2.5", conservation, constellation, data center, Data Center Knowledge, energy consumption, Fortune Data Center, IT, PG&E, power, San Jose, savvio, Seagate
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Robin Harris talks about capacity growth in 2.5″ notebook drives, and wonders what it portends for the enterprise. No doubt that 1 TB ‘mobile’ drives, available from Seagate later this quarter, are interesting. But the enterprise is affected in a way not discussed by StorageMojo.
He’s absolutely right that the enterprise is moving to 2.5″ SAS and SATA. But the 2.5″ notebook device world has little to do with it, other than general learning curve efficiencies in the factory.
That’s because unlike the 3.5″ form factor, 2.5″ ‘mobile’ drives have very little to do with enterprise drives. Even the width of the drives are different. This has lead to a new-to-the-world class of 2.5″ 7200 rpm enterprise drives, since notebook drives won’t ever have what it takes to support enterprise. These new drives come in SAS or SATA (which says a lot, given the idealogical differences between the SAS and SATA disk drive contingents), currently up to 500GB.
It’s rare these days to see a totally new animal in the disk drive world. Seagate’s version is called Constellation. It’s the (till now) missing link for the 2.5″ enterprise form factor to go “all the way”.
Check it out.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in Products, SAS, Trends, sata
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Tagged 1 TB, 2.5", 500GB, constellation, disk drive, enterprise, future, missing link, mobile, Robin Harris, SAS, sata, Seagate, storage, StorageMojo, WD
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ComputerWorld points out a stark disparity between green IT hype and actual practice for Desktop IT managers.
- Forrester Research says only 13% of IT managers have implemented wide-scale power management for PCs.
- The EPA estimates that 10% or less of all enterprise PCs have their power management features turned on.
It’s not that they don’t care. Only 9% of those surveyed by Forrester had no interest in PC power management.
More likely is that the approximately $50 per year savings per PC doesn’t incite action, especially when the perception is that power-managed PCs under-perform.
This will change as energy costs rise and power management techniques become less and less disruptive. At the same time, storage power consumption continues to decline across the board, reducing energy use for every minute of every day. Take for example the Seagate Momentus 7200, Seagate’s highest performing notebook drive. It uses close to the same amount of power as its cousin the Momentus 5400 drive.
Rather than guess, let’s hear from IT managers. Why haven’t you enabled power management across all of your PCs?
Photo source: trendmicro.com
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in Desktop IT, Green IT, Trends
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Tagged 5400, 7200, Desktop IT, energy consumption, energy use, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Forrester Research, IT, laptop, momentus, Momentus 7200, Momentus 7200.4, notebook, pc, power, power management, Seagate
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Beth Pariseau reported on two big storage announcements from HP:
- HP will move its entire storage line to six Gbps small form factor SAS, starting with the D2000 in the fall. That’s two valuable transitions in one: moving from 4Gbps FC to 6 Gbps SAS, and moving from 3.5″ drives to 2.5″ drives.
- All HP Proliant servers will now support 15K, 10K and 7200 rpm SAS drives. That’s pure SAS from head to toe.
HP has been a strong SAS proponent in servers for years. Bringing 7200 rpm high capacity SAS drives into the mix is a big deal, because it reduces the cost/capacity for servers while preserving the full enterprise-class advantage set that SAS brings to the table.
No wonder IDC sees a bright future for SAS.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in 10K/15K RPM, Companies, SAS, Servers, Storage Systems
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Tagged 10K, 15K, 2.5", 3.5", 6 Gb, 6 Gb/sec, 6 Gpbs, 7200 rpm, Beth Pariseau, constellation, D2000, FC, HP, SAS, Seagate, SearchStorage, Servers, six-gig, Storage Systems, StorageWorks, tiered storage
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Chris Mellor at The Register heard from Gary Veale, HP’s new StorageWorks EMEA VP on HP’s storage future – and it looks a lot like HP’s current servers.
Veale says HP will decouple storage management, processors and storage with a modular blade approach. Processor blades can be a place to innovate around deduplication, virtualization, etc. while storage blades are designed to cram the most storage into the most efficient package.
Dedicated storage blades will free HP to more rapidly grow their capacity and efficiency. A singular focus on storage, unencumbered by the processing and management considerations that are important, but now delegated further up the chain.
Keep your eyes on 2.5″ drives
Chris goes on to speculate that HP might create tiers of storage blades, with 2.5″ drives in some for performance and 3.5″ drives in others for capacity.
Maybe. But 2.5″ drives - like Seagate’s Constellation enterprise 7200 rpm drive - are 500GB and growing. Soon 2.5″ drives will deliver more capacity in a blade than 3.5″ drives can. Moreover, 2.5″ product offerings have broadened to include 15K, 10K and 7200 RPM performance classes. Everyproduct you can get in a 3.5″ form factor, you can now get in 2.5″.
Keep your eyes on 2.5″ drives as it becomes the common standard for storage across the industry. It’s only a matter of time.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in Companies, Servers, Storage Systems
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Tagged 2.5", 3.5", 7200 rpm, blade, Chris Mellor, constellation, deduplication, Gary Veale, HP, savvio, Seagate, Servers, Storage Systems, The Register
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With the ever-increasing amounts of data storage requirements, IT managers are running out of floor space to house it all. In fact, in a Storage Magazine’s recent survey, seventy-one percent of respondents indicated that “Managing rapidly growing capacity requirements” is their biggest problem.
Typically we see overflow racks creeping into corners of the employee kitchens or even the proverbial closet once reserved for coats and umbrellas. But believe it or not, I recently heard of a Data Center manager who had resorted to using “roof-top storage” for his burgeoning storage need. Yes, I mean literally moving some of his data storage to the roof of his building! (Kind of gives a new meaning to “Storage in the cloud”, doesn’t it, Pete?)
At this rate, could this really be that far off in the future? With the advent of durable, weather-resistant, storage containers like PODs (Portable On-Demand Storage), is this a reality for housing our archived or nearline data and if so — what will a storage array look like that needs to operate in this kind of environment?
Looking for another option? Try the 2.5-inch hard drives (Constellation for nearline environments) and increase your space savings by 70% over traditional 3.5-inch hard drives. (And you’ll gain on power & cooling efficiencies at the same time)
Running out of room in your data center? Let us know what options you’re looking at for your next rack?
The guys over at sacklun.ch must’ve spend a month spinning Seagate drives to generate this thoughtful and incredibly thorough review. Their focus was documenting the difference between 2.5″ and 3.5″ enterprise drives using just about every imaginable scale.
Consider it a handy 3rd party reference for Seagate’s enterprise line-up.
Of course, you can always go here for Seagate’s perspective on Cheetah, Savvio and Constellation drives.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in 10K/15K RPM, Products, reviews
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Tagged 10K, 15K, 2.5", 3.5", benchmark, Cheetah, comparison, complete, constellation, disk drive, line up, performance, portfolio, review, Sacklunch, Seagate, speed
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Source: Ars Technica
Server technology is borrowing on a proven trend from storage with a new generation of cost-efficient architectures.
Over the past five years, data centers have been transformed by the addition of capacity-optimized disk drives like Seagate’s new Constellation drives. Whether you call them nearline, midline, business critical or enterprise SATA drives, they have not cannibalized enterprise disk drives as some expected, but actually expanded the demand for storage by accelerating data growth. The more data that could be stored efficiently, the more applications were created.
Dell’s new sub-blade server achitecture is a significant move in the same direction for servers. It’s not obvious if this trend works with or against the current of virtualization in servers, but one thing is clear: more efficient servers will not trash the existing server market, but will likely expand it by opening up new applications.
There’s latent demand for data-hungry applications. The more efficient servers and storage become, the more data will be created. The exponential data growth curve continues!
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in Green IT, Servers, Trends
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Tagged 7200 rpm, Ars Technica, business critical, data growth, dell, disk drives, enterprise SATA, hot-swappable, midline, Nano, nearline, power efficient, Rackable, sata, Seagate, Servers, SGI, sub-blade, trend
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As I was perusing some HP server benchmarks recently, I was struck by how integral disk drives are to server performance – and not just IOPS. Disk drives are a quiet but essential part of what makes a server fast, energy efficient or just do whatever it was born to do.
Take for example HP’s DL370 G6 that has broken records in 2P TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council) performance. 2.5″ form factor 15K rpm drives are under the covers playing a key role. These are the fastest disk drives on the planet – just what you need when breaking system speed records.
Then there’s the HP DL380 G6 and its SPECpower rating. The G6 is incredibly efficient, with 40X more performance per watt than the G4. And while the 2.5″ drive used in this test wasn’t specified, enterprise disk drive power consumption varies dramatically. All 2.5″ form factor drives are 70% more power efficient that their 3.5″ elders. And Seagate’s new Constellation 2.5″ 7200 rpm enterprise drive, is a SAS power miser, using 2.8 W when idle, and less than half that in standby mode.
The lesson of the day: server drives are not all created equal. Check under the hood to be sure a server has the class of drive meant for your application.
By Pete Steege
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Also posted in 10K/15K RPM, SAS, Servers
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Tagged 15k rpm, 2.5", 3.5", 7200 rpm, benchmarks, constellation, DL370, DL380, HP, IOPS, performance, power efficiency, SAS, savvio, Seagate, server, SPECpower, speed, TPC, Transaction Processing Performance Council, watts
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