Skip to main content

Storage Networking Group Launches Green Storage Initiative

The Storage Networking Industry Association wants to slash the environmental impact of data storage operations by gathering industry players for the Green Storage Initiative, which will align with The Green Grid and EPA.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) wants to slash the environmental impact of data storage operations by gathering industry players for the Green Storage Initiative.

The group, whose early members include Brocade, Microsoft, Dell and QLogic, among many others, will work to advance energy efficiency in all network storage technologies. The initiative will work with allied organizations, such as The Green Grid and the U.S. Environmental Protection.

"Many government agencies worldwide have begun investigating data center energy consumption, and the SNIA is very interested in working with them to establish consistent best practices and ways to fairly measure and manage the energy consumption of shared storage technologies," Vincent Franceschini, SNIA chair and board of directors member, said in a statement. "As with all SNIA Initiatives, our aim is to benefit end users, vendors, the channel and, in this case, the environment with our Green Storage Initiative."

Its work, geared to compliment that of the SNIA's Green Storage Technical Working Group, will examine all storage technologies, such as disk and tape systems, server connectivity, storage appliances, fabrics and miscellaneous network infrastructure, file services and applications.

The Initiative will develop tutorials, educational materials, white papers, best practices and help companies create more energy efficient products. It will explore technologies, such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning and tape-based archiving.

More on this topic