IBM data centres cut consumption

ON WEDNESDAY IBM announced that it would be unleashing a new line of modularly-designed data centers into the corporate jungle.

Unsurprisingly, IBM wants us to know that these new and purportedly improved data centers, along with the firm’s latest storage virtualisation software, will cut energy consumption levels by half, compared to the ones already in place. Good-o.

The company reckons that the updated software will let clients get on with more business data consolidation, which of course translates into the PR spin of managing things more efficiently. Not only that, but IBM is also touting the new software as an instant fix to boosting utilisation rates, energy efficiency, availability, and even scalability of critical applications, whatever those may be.

An IBM press release gushes about its oh-so-fresh-and-new IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software, boasting that any company using it could significantly improve its “flexibility and responsiveness” through the creation of consolidated, virtual pools of information. And here we were thinking you could only do that through Yoga.

The argument for storage virtualisation runs that the technology reduces the need for more physical storage hardware systems, thus ultimately reducing overall energy guzzleage by the data center. IBM is definitely an evangelist when it comes to Virtualisation, even going as far as enshrining it as one of its five pillars (commandments) of Project Big Green.

Project Big Green definitely lives up to one part of its name, with IBM’s Enterprise Modular Data Center sized up to between 1500 and 6096 square meters. So size does matter then.

Because they are not exactly compact, IBM has suggested that firms buy the centres when undergoing new construction. But the company is also offering a portable data centre option for those who like their storage “to-go”, handily packed in massive shipping containers. Big blue shipping containers. Or maybe even green. µ