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Abstract

Each release of magnetic disk drive technology delivers expanded data storage capacity and heralds another round of media articles about magnetic tape storage having reached the end of its natural life. For many individuals, the easiest way to protect data on fallible disk drives is to copy it to cheaper, larger, less robust disk drives.

In social and scientific eResearch, the demand for data exceeds the rate that disk drive capacity is growing so the need for more compute and more storage devices is accelerating. More devices leads to higher energy use and as energy prices continue to rise, the cost of running the data centre climbs driving some researchers to bypass central IT and keep valuable collections on private DVD’s.

This session compares the energy footprint of various disk technologies in contrast with tape. It discusses the energy savings that can be achieved using a multi tiered approach for storing massive volumes of data without compromising accessibility.

Get answers to; how much greener is tape than disk, how does tape address data management challenges and how can tape deliver the required level of performance to be viable as a mass storage medium for larger data collections.

About the speaker

David is a Storage Solutions Architect with SGI Professional Services. David’s experience covers all aspects of the system life cycle from requirements analysis, infrastructure design, hardware sizing, capacity planning, continuity planning, integration planning and benchmarking for new systems through to configuration management, change management and problem management for mature systems. He has provided consultancy to clients on technology and architecture options, designing solutions in conjunction with multiple vendors and managing complex implementations. David’s knowledge covers broadcast and post production, HPC, storage products, storage performance management with expert knowledge of storage area network architectures, multi tiered storage and data protection. Prior to joining SGI, David managed IT resources for Telecom NZ Ltd, worked as a business analyst for the Post Office and worked as a technical consultant for Mobil Oil. David has a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Victoria University.