I have been tardy in keeping up with this BLOG stream of storage cost categories. I will try to get a few more posts in before the thanksgiving holiday.

# 15 - Cost of Electricity - Storage assets, like all IT assets consume large quantities of electricity. Steady-state operation, including power conditioning, batter back-up, UPS systems and air conditioning all add up to a large sum of money to electrify storage assets. You can look up the kVA or kWatt consumption of your devices, and multiply by the kWatt hour cost that you pay to the local utility to calculate total spend. Air conditioning costs can be converted to wattage by taking the BTU factor and divide that number by 3413. See this older blog on power.

New technologies like server and storage virtualization, MAID and others can help with the long-term reduction of power consumption in the data center. 

Newer-generation storage systems pack more gigabytes into a smaller footprint, requiring less floor space, and do not run as hot—per terabyte or per square meter—demanding less of air conditioning systems and reducing electricity consumption. One of the most significant trends affecting storage infrastructure environmental costs is consolidation. By centralizing storage in a few large frames, companies can achieve significant savings in electricity costs.

#16 - Ad-hoc servers acting as Gateways - It is estimated that 5-10% of all Wintel servers in a data center are being used as informal storage gateways, NAS filers and such. These general purpose servers can be replaced with fit-for-purpose appliances or gateways, and the servers returned to the general purpose pool. Management is easier, and removing dozens or hundreds of ad-hoc servers will simplify management  and software maintenance costs.

 Dedicated gateways and filers have lower TCO, higher performance and availability than general purpose servers. Swapping out these devices can lower your management costs and simplify the total storage infrastructure.

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