FEATURE
large size of many modern facilities . This kind of efficiency can also have a direct impact on an organisation ’ s CO 2 emission levels , particularly if their infrastructure is powered by fossil fuel electricity generation .
The potential power-saving benefits don ’ t end there . Aside from computing power , data storage is one of the most power-hungry elements in the modern data centre environment . In a modelled production environment , for example , one study found that migrating data that is less active from disk drives to tape drives could achieve an 85 % reduction in CO 2 emissions resulting from running approximately 500 TB of less active data
TAPE CAN PLAY A SIGNIFICANT
PART IN DELIVERING
MORE EFFICIENT , AFFORDABLE
AND GREENER IT SOLUTIONS .
on tape versus HDD over a 12-month period . While this number might be on the upper end of potential CO 2 reductions , it does underline the significant potential for tape to help deliver a meaningful impact on emissions .
Waste and pollution
In addition to reducing electricity consumption – and by extension , lowering CO 2 -emissions – tape storage also has a lower overall impact on the environment than disk-based systems based on the levels of waste created over the lifespan of the technologies . For example , magnetic tape storage has a much longer lifespan than most hard disk drives . Hosted in an environment with stable humidity and temperature sensibly controlled , tape will last anything between 10 – 20 years , depending on usage levels . In contrast , most hard disk drives in use today will only last three-to-five years , not least because disks rely on many more moving parts that are liable to wear out and fail over time .
As a result , disk arrays are typically refreshed over a three-to-five-year refresh cycle , as opposed to tape libraries where the process can easily exceed a decade or more . The environmental benefit is that organisations can achieve anything up to a two-thirds reduction in disposal requirements by using tape drives instead of disk drives . On top of that , using tape storage also reduces e-waste , such as that derived from circuit boards , which can often contain highly polluting components .
For those organisations focused on balancing storage infrastructure performance against their environmental responsibilities , tape can play a significant part in delivering more efficient , affordable and greener IT solutions . By implementing tape as a storage tier in their production environments and replacing spinning HDDs with tape media for the less active data , there is scope to save significant sums on energy consumption , while also reducing CO 2 emissions and disposal costs . As a technology unrivalled in its longevity , cost to capacity , reliability , portability and security , tape continues to play a crucial role in data protection and archive solutions . Looking to the future , this role seems certain to increase even further as organisations look for a performance and environmental win-win . �
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