New Data Storage System Cuts Energy Use and Costs by 75%

Companies like Google are trying to come up with creative ways to use renewable energy, like tidal power, to power energy-sucking data storage centers. But while they’re coming up with ways to float their servers in the middle of the ocean, Sun Microsystems has come up with a way to cut how much energy servers use in the first place. The company is launching a new line of data storage products that use far less energy than traditional systems and dramatically cut costs.

According to researchers at Stanford University, between 2000 and 2005 the energy used by data servers doubled to 123 billion kwh, equaling one percent of the world’s electricity use. The new systems developed by Sun use open source and solid-state memory drives, which require less power because they don’t have moving parts. The systems will use 25 percent of the energy used by current systems.

The even better news is that Sun claims that the reduction in power consumption plus the use of an open source system will cut costs by 75 percent compared to its competitors. Let’s hope that will be enough incentive to get companies to use the new products and cut their energy consumption.

via Earth2Tech

Image via Sun Microsystems

Source: EcoGeek.org