SNIA Green Storage Initiative Releases Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement V2.0

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative (GSI) announced the availability of the SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 and the SNIA Emerald User Guide V2.0.

The revised specification includes a new active workload IO profile named hot band, commonly called ‘hot-banding.’ In combination, the Emerald specification provides a vendor-neutral power efficiency test measurement set of methods and the Emerald Program provides an industry-wide repository of measured test data.

"SNIA continues to focus on the importance of Energy Efficiency in the data center by improving the SNIA Emerald program and its test methods," said Patrick Stanko, chair of the SNIA Green Storage Technical Work Group. "The ‘hot band’ IO profile is a result of many months of test measurements and analysis by members of the SNIA."

The new Emerald ‘hot band’ IO profile provides a workload that considers the contribution of read caching. This workload consists of a mix of different IO sizes and access patterns with a skewed access across a range of blocks. This skewed access tends to hold data in cache and creates ‘cache hits’ for improved throughput and reduced power consumption. Many storage array deployments today feature larger cache sizes than a few years ago. The Emerald specification also retains the random and sequential read/write workloads.

The Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification
consists of the four elements:

Taxonomy, Test Methodology, Test Metrics
Idle Measurement Test, and Test Metrics
Active Measurement Test.

The V2.0 specification adds the ‘hot band’ IO profile to the Active Measurement Test for online and near-online storage system taxonomy classification.

The Emerald Program website provides the industry with the resources needed to learn about, evaluate, test and submit storage system power usage and efficiency test results acquired by using the Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification.

SNIA will conduct a multi-day training class and lab in Q2 2013 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs. The training will cover the Emerald test setup, data collection, and reporting with storage systems in a lab environment. Professionals that should attend include test engineers, independent test labs, test auditors and certifying bodies. The training is open to the industry.

Storage system manufacturers and industry testing labs can download the Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 from the Emerald website. SNIA also recommends downloading the Emerald User Guide V2.0 that provides step-by-step guidance on how to setup a test and measurement environment for a storage system under test, and then submit measured test results to the Emerald Program. Once submitted test results are approved for public posting, manufacturers will obtain an Emerald Program logo to highlight their program participation. In turn, the industry at large can view the posted test results of various storage systems and review products that met and undergone the Emerald testing requirements.

About the SNIA Green Storage Initiative
It is dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked storage technologies in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of data storage operations. Green Storage activities take place in two separate working bodies, the Green Storage Technical Working Group (TWG) and the Green Storage Initiative. The TWG is focused on developing test metrics by which energy consumption and efficiency can be measured. The Green Storage Initiative is focused on creating and publicizing best practices for energy efficient storage networking, educating the IT community, and promoting storage-centric applications that reduce storage footprint and associated power requirements. The members of the GSI, as of January 2013, include Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, Huawei, IBM, LSI, Oracle, NetApp, QLogic, Seagate, and Xyratex.

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SNIA Green Storage Initiative Unveils SNIA Emerald Website
Accessing to power efficiency measurement specs and test results