Green IT Solutions - Time to rethink

Since Al Gore won an Oscar for his documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth", the discussion about climate change has also reached data centers. Simple projections of energy consumption show how much energy could be saved if devices and systems were to use and exploit existing technologies more efficiently.

Green-IT - Time to rethink
Green-IT - Time to rethink

Up to now, criteria such as security, reliability and the price/performance ratio of IT systems have been in the foreground. Recently, the criteria of energy consumption and efficiency have received increasing attention, especially for long-term storage. In addition to the emerging environmental awareness, this is due to the constantly rising energy costs, which are having a double effect in data centers - through the power consumption of the IT equipment itself as well as for air conditioning and uninterruptible power supply.

The constant growth in the amount of data to be stored, with an annual growth rate of 30-40%, makes a rethink necessary. The four existing storage technologies - solid state drive (SSD), hard disk (HD), optical disc (Blu-ray / DVD / CD) and tape - used in the right mix can not only increase the availability, security and reliability of the entire system, but also optimize the legal compliance requirements and the energy efficiency of the IT infrastructure.

The traditionally strong area of optical storage systems at INCOM is now not only the leader in terms of security and longevity, but also in terms of energy consumption. The TÜV Saarland Group has examined two optical systems from DISC and JVC and certified them as safe and most energy-efficient archives on the market.