Pillar's Power Pitch

5:15 PM -- How green is your storage? Pillar Data Systems can help you find out, using a newly devised mathematical formula.

According to Pillar, any organization with an environmental and civic conscience must do more than shut off some data center lights. A range of factors go into a solid energy strategy. Pillar has combined these in a unique equation, designed to gauge the efficiency of storage gear. Here it is:

Got that? By dividing your storage system's required IOPS by power consumption per square meter, you'll get a figure that will help you determine the greenest, most energy-efficient storage system.

Of course, you need to feed in the right numbers. Pillar snatched a few figures off competitors' Websites to demonstrate that its own gear virtually doubles the green value of systems from EMC, NetApp, and 3PAR.

What do these vendors say to the power-trashing? "We do have a very strong response, and though we aren't ready to reveal our data yet -- we are confident that Pillar's claims of leadership in this arena are already outdated," asserts Eric Brown, senior director of worldwide PR at NetApp."I have to be honest -- I don't understand Pillar's power metric, but then again I have never been very good with Pillar math," writes 3PAR VP of marketing Craig Nunes, in an email. "First of all, our industry relies on most of the same vendors for disk drive technology. Therefore it is difficult to make a case that one array vendor's disk drives are more or less power-efficient than another's." Nunes has his own power axe to grind. (See Power Problems Plague Users.)

"The best strategy for energy efficiency is to simply eliminate the allocated but unused capacity with thin provisioning... No complex equations are required," he states.

EMC didn't have an answer, just more questions. "How are they comparing this to the CLARiiON CX3-40 when customers can customize the number of drives, the drive types/density? How are Pillar's IOPs measured?" demanded EMC spokeswoman Hadley Weinzierl.

Unfortunately, we're not really sure. Pillar admits its metric isn't quite scientific. But that's not stopping the vendor's execs from peddling their "green financial reasoning."

And so another marketing bandwagon lurches on...Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch