Road to Green Metrics – a SNIA Green Storage TWG Update · Road to Green Metrics - a SNIA Green Storage TWG Update Patrick B. Chu - ISW 2008 2 Outline • What are SNIA / GSI

Road to Green Metrics – a SNIA Green Storage TWG UpdatePatrick B. Chu, Ph.D.May 12, 2008

Road to Green Metrics - a SNIA Green Storage TWG Update Patrick B. Chu - ISW 2008 2

Outline

• What are SNIA / GSI / GTWG?• Interest and motivation for Green standards • Taxonomy goals, challenges, and examples• Metrics goals, challenges, and examples • Workload / test definition• Learning from power measurements• Power reduction features• Other SNIA activities• Summary


Storage Networking Industry Association

7000 members representing over 400 organizations: vendors, end-user, channel, and academia

Mission• Lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and

promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information

Vision Statements• Be the trusted advisor in storage technologies in support of

information management• Be catalyst for development of IT and storage standards• Establish a strong international presence to support local

storage and information management marketplace


Green Storage Initiative (GSI)

Dedicated in advancing energy efficiency and conservation in allnetworked storage technologies and minimizing the environmental impact of data storage operations

• Educate the vendor and user community about the importance of power conservation in shared storage environments

• Leverage SNW and other SNIA and partner conferences to focus attention on energy efficiency for networked storage infrastructures

• To conduct research on power and cooling issues confronting storage administrators

• Provide input to the SNIA Green Storage TWG on requirements for green storage metrics and standards

• Provide external advocacy and support of the technical work of the SNIA Green Storage Technical Working Group


Green Storage Technical Working GroupGeneral interests

• Benchmark considerations, design efficiency, design / configuration of system, instrumentation and runtime

Near team major focuses• Green Storage Metrics — energy consumption and efficiency

metrics to support 1) development of energy-efficient products, 2) end-user customer evaluation, and 3) regulatory standards.

• Establish a method for results collection against the green storage metrics.

Activities – 4 Subgroups • Weekly conference calls• Member Face-to-face Meetings (every other month)• Plug Fests


GSI – Strategic Member Companies 2007-08


U.S. – EPA Report to Congress

Trends in Data Center Energy UseSector consumed about 61 billion KWh in 2006

• Equates to ~1.5% total U.S. electricity consumption and ~$4.5 billion

• Federal sector: ~ 6 billion kWh and ~$450 million

Projected to increase to 100 billion kWh in 2011• Equates to ~2.5% of total U.S. electricity consumption and

~$7.4 billion

Source: ENERGY STAR® & IT EquipmentA Program Overview Including EPA Initiatives on Servers and Storage Equipment by Andrew Fanara 2008-01-08


Data Center Power Draw

“Building the Green Data Center”© 2008 SNIA All Rights Reserved


Motivations for Green• Cost of Energy

- Poor efficiency leads to high cooling cost- High operation cost undesirable- Energy cost competes w/ cap. expense / material / resource

• Scalability- Limit energy supply constraint growth of a given data center- Heat density / cooling concern

• Environmental concerns- Impact to ozone, wild life- Improve corporate image / product appeal

• Regulatory compliance

Potential Solutions:Improve system efficiency Minimize energy consumptionNew technologies


Comparison of Projected Electricity UseAll Scenarios 2007 - 2011

NewTechnologyand Metrics and Measurements

Today and Tomorrow Best Practices and Tools

Graph source: EPA


Outline

• What is SNIA / GSI / GTWG?• Interest and motivation for Green standards• Taxonomy goals, challenges, and examples• Metrics goals, challenges, and examples • Workload / test definition• Learning from power measurements• Power reduction features• Other SNIA activities• Summary

“It’s not easy to be

green”


Taxonomy Goals and Challenges

Goals:• Develop classifications to enable fair comparisons of

similar storage products• Taxonomy ideally covers broad range of products• Categories ideally are distinct and not numerousIssues:• Potential divisions may be drawn based on performance,

capacity, features, market segments, and cost.• Products often have complex characteristics and could

span multiple categories.• A given storage product may be configured with different

options and exhibits dramatically different behavior


Taxonomy Examples

Distinction based on response time (mean time to data):• Online -- < xx ms• Near online – > xx ms but < yy min• Offline -- > yy min

Distinction based on throughput (IOPS):• Performance -- > zz k IOPS• Capacity -- default

Distinction based on market segment:• SoHo (small office / home office)• DAS (direct attached storage)• Entry, Mid-range, High-end


Metrics Goals and ChallengesGoals:• Scientific measures to indicate green performance • Metrics would assist in data design, operation and

regulatory compliance• Provide estimation of power consumption over timeIssues:• Storage systems have many modes and outputs, some

of which are not all easily quantifiable• A single metrics (such as Watt/Tbyte) does not generally

reflect the capability of the whole system• Multiple metrics may be weighed and combined to form

a single metrics but an unbiased and scientific approach is not obvious.


Metrics Examples

Workload consideration• Data at rest -- Idle power (Watt)• Data on the move -- Throughput (Mb/s)• Data at work -- Performance (IOPS)

Useful Metrics• TB per Watt; Mb/s per Watt; IOPS per Watt• Power supply conversion efficiency; CO2 footprint

Reliability / availability / serviceability considerations• Latency• RAID level• Meantime to data loss

Server example


Workload / Test Definition

• Desire realistic workload to estimate power consumption behavior in the field

• Ideally unique workload is not required to test each category of storage system

Ideas being evaluated:• Idle – no read / write request but perform background

activities (scrubbing, etc.)• Sequential read / write with “typical” block size• OLTP-like random read / write• Peak – operate at max. throughput or other defined

condition• Fixed data set to be processed under given conditions


Selected Learning Points• Idle power and peak power are comparable (within 20%)

thus Idle activity definition and management is critical• Peak power may be reached before maximum

performance occurs• Overnight Idle power tests provide more informative

results than short-duration Idle power tests• Fan operation has notable impact on power consumption,

thus temperature control is important for fair testing• Large range of power measurement values (50W to

1600W) from different systems indicates needs for normalization and careful specification of power meters

• Measurement requirements are different between system characterization / qualification and monitoring during operations


Power Saving Features

• New system architecture / software features are recognized to enable more efficient storage usage (virtualization, de-dublication, thin provisioning, MAID, spindown)

• Smart architectures / features to be promoted in high-end to low-end storage systems

• Check list is helpful to acknowledge green features• In practice, benefits of power reduction (software) features

may need to be quantified to help characterize / compare a system’s green performance- System may not implement power saving feature with same

effectiveness- Simple power measurements may not reflected the gain in

overall system power reduction


Other SNIA On-going Activities

• Power supply efficiency standards and guidelines may be lowest hanging fruit (difficulty in implementation in product not yet understood)

• Operational metrics / guideline for data center being discussed

• Active engagement with EPA to support Energy Star Program

• Alliance being formed with other green consortiums (ex. The Green Grid)

• Workshops / seminars / white papers are being generated to promote green awareness and best practices


Summary• Strong interest and support exhibited by SNIA industry

members in green standard development• Steady progress being made in joint effort among multiple

companies- On-going effort in analyzing data and refining power testing

requirements and conditions- On-going effort in metrics and taxonomy definitions

• Substantial learning and discovery expected to develop meaningful and effective standards and guidelines


How you can help…Industry:

• Join SNIA and take part in green standard development• Share your power measurements / learning with the

community and participate in plug festAcademia:

• Help quantifying benefits of power reduction technologies and features

• Promote creating thinking in developing green solutions


Thank You!

Have a Green Day!

Road to Green Metrics – a SNIA Green Storage TWG Update · Road to Green Metrics - a SNIA Green Storage TWG Update Patrick B. Chu - ISW 2008 2 Outline • What are SNIA / GSI

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