As data centers run hotter and consume more power, CIOs have begun looking for ways to get more performance out of their data centers, while cutting power and cooling costs. They've literally been forced into going green. Now you can calculate how much performance and capacity you can get out of a system, based on its space and power consumption.
Pillar Storage Efficiency Quotient (EQ)™ was designed to set an industry benchmark for evaluating data storage efficiencies. Pillar EQ quickly illustrates benefits of consolidating multiple tiers and applications onto a single storage platform—all while delivering industry leading performance and utilization while consuming the lowest amounts of space and energy.
Utilization (u): The usable capacity of the storage system. Average industry utilization for a storage system is 40%. Pillar Axiom averages twice that.
Capacity: Total size of the storage system in terms of terabytes.
Performance: The average disk transfer per second. While you can get this number from the manufacturer, it is often found that the real number differs due to additional factors, such as Disk Utilization and placement.
Power: Energy consumed by the system in terms of Watts. It is best to include the power required to cool the unit (though challenging to calculate individually).
Space: The square meters (or footprint) of the system. To simplify this calculation, the average floor tile is 0.36 m(2) (600mm x 600mm). Simply count the floor tiles your storage system occupies.
The above illustrates a Pillar Axiom 600 SAN system which provides 80% utilization (due to Pillar QoS which makes optimal use of the drive capacity). If the Axiom were equipped with 16 Bricks (drive shelves) with each shelf having 13 disk drives each of 750 GB SATA at 7200 rpm, then the total storage capacity in the enclosure would be 156 TB. Assuming all 100% read traffic, the system would be capable of 21,307 IOPs; the power consumption of the fully populated storage cabinet would be 4651 watts; and the floor space occupied would be 0.61 square meters.
Test Your EQ: Start by clicking on the utilization form and entering in 1 -100. Next numerically enter in your capacity, performance, power and space figures. Once you have filled in all five forms, you will receive your EQ score in numeric and bar graph results.
Pillar Axiom configurations are single Slammer systems, with performance calculations for 100% reads. SATA drives are 7200 rpm. FC drives are 15,000 rpm.
North America
