Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Hard disk drives, being the largest commodity in cloud computing, are also becoming
more energy efficient. New improvements on earlier technology designs allow for saving
energy during periods of inactivity, so as the idle time increases, so too will power savings,
yet the drives can still quickly respond even after a long period of being idle. Manufacturers
have their own power-saving features; for example, Seagate has PowerChoice technology,
which was specifically developed for the enterprise and cloud computing. With PowerChoice,
operators have more control over the hard drive's power consumption and functions and are
able to create power modes.
In 2011, Ars Technica did some research to see if “green” hard drives are really that
efficient. A 1 TB hard disk running at 3 Gbps will consume an average of 8.4 watts.
So if you have a data center that runs a configuration with a total of 1,000 hard drives
24 hours a day, the total power consumption is 201.6 kilowatt hours (kWh). If you run
that for a year, you have accumulated 73,584 kWh of power consumption. The average
price per kWh in the United States is $0.135, so that means the energy cost for run-
ning 1,000 “green” hard drives for a whole year was $9,933.84. According to Seagate,
PowerChoice technology can cut that energy consumption down to 39,735 kWh per
year, bringing the energy cost to a mere $5,364.27, but that is just one of the benefits
(others are increased capacity and performance). The savings that a technology like this
can bring will only grow exponentially as the capacity of the data center expands.
Since there are efficiency requirements with all new data centers, there is a need to select
hardware that is more efficient as well. It will not do to simply choose the “good enough”
hardware. When you are building cloud data centers to cater to many customers, your goal
is to achieve economies of scale. The more customers you think you will have, the cheaper
it is to build the data center; because all these customers are carrying and sharing the costs,
ROI would be quicker. Therefore, choosing the more expensive yet more efficient devices
will not be a problem.
Security Promise
The future adoption of cloud computing by the masses will depend upon security. The
need for physical security is of course a given, and system and network security must take
precedence in this connected world. Service providers must promise that the security they
offer is as good as or better than the security offered by on-premises data centers. They
must also ensure that all employees are accountable for security failures, data loss, and data
theft. Service providers must make sure their own employees and operators are not security
threats themselves. There is no surefire way to do this except to have a good track record,
so service providers should work at building up their reputation for security.
Optimization and the Bottom Line
For most modern businesses, IT is not just a business necessity; it is a critical piece of the
business puzzle, and it has an important impact on the success of overall business operations
and, of course, the bottom line. However, not everybody sees it that way. A lot of lower-level
executives see IT only as a means to complete their tasks, and even those in IT sometimes
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