Overview

X-IO Technologies is committed to responsible environmental management.

Energy efficiency through innovative product design and development provides the primary focus for our current environmental sustainability goals.

We are a company with much of our footprint in Colorado and Minnesota, progressive states that inherently assign great value to environmental preservation initiatives. But our position in the technology marketplace, arguably one of the highest-impact industries with regard to the environment, causes us to place an even higher premium on the importance of developing products that reduce global energy consumption in a significant way.

"Green" Product Engineering

The term "green" is used a lot these days. But what does it really mean and why should manufacturers care? Why should you care? Reducing energy and resource use, as well as contributing less waste to landfills, is good for the planet, of course. But lowering your energy consumption also has a direct result on your company's bottom line: The StorageIO Group estimates that 20 to 30 percent of a computer center's budget is directly related to energy costs.

X-IO is committed to delivering highly efficient storage systems that provide real bottom-line savings:

• X-IO's ISE Storage Blade family of storage solutions, built on patented Intelligent Storage Element (ISE™) technology, provide the capacity and performance you need with less hardware than other systems.
• The ISE Storage Blade's exclusive PowerNAP™ feature enables you to power down your entire storage system when it's not needed and then quickly power it back up.
• ISE Storage Blade sequentially powers up drives within the DataPacs, eliminating the need to over-provision power.
• X-IO's solutions make a perfect storage foundation for server virtualization and consolidation strategies. Eliminating servers can provide big savings for your organization and is far better for the environment than any alternative approach.
• X-IO is a member of the Green Grid and participates in the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) rebate program, which rewards organizations for utilizing energy efficient systems.

Efficient by Design

ISE technology tightly integrates drive, enclosure, and controller software to maximize efficient operation. In addition, rather than individual drives, ISE technology uses sealed DataPacs, which pool the capacity and performance of 10 to 20 disk drives. This unique ISE design also significantly reduces vibration and improves cooling. The result is a highly efficient storage system that provides unmatched reliability and performance.

In 2008, X-IO compared energy consumption of a number of storage systems, based on data submitted to the Storage Performance Council (SPC). X-IO's ISE Storage Blade system delivered better efficiency than any of the systems tested.

• I/O efficiency (watts/enclosure/IOPS/disk): ISE Storage Blade was slightly more efficient than systems submitted by EMC and HP, nearly 50 percent better than HDS, and nearly 7 times better than 3PAR.
• Economic efficiency (kilowatts-$/IOPS/enclosure): ISE Storage Blade was 4 to 5 times more efficient than systems submitted by EMC, HP, and 3PAR, and nearly 10 times better than HDS.

See X-IO's white paper, Storage Efficiency: The Key to Green Storage Operation, for all the details.

The SPC recently debuted its own measure of energy use: SPC Benchmark 1/Energy (SPC-1/E). To date, X-IO is the ONLY vendor to allow the SPC to publish its results and looks forward to comparing ISE Storage Blade energy usage to that of other storage systems.

Fewer Disks Needed

ISE technology enables you to meet your capacity and performance needs with far fewer disks, lowering your power and cooling costs while taking less space in your data center.

• 100 Percent Usable Storage Capacity: Many storage vendors hold back capacity–some as much as 70 percent–for things like RAID management and features you may not need. ISE technology lets you use up to 100 percent of available storage capacity (after RAID). You get to use everything you buy, which means you can buy a lot less.
• No Utilization/Performance Trade-Off: With most storage systems, as disk utilization goes up, performance goes down. Therefore, you often must buy more disks solely to maintain adequate performance. And more disks mean more power and more rack space. With ISE technology, performance remains strong even as capacity utilization reaches 100 percent. This eliminates the expense of buying and powering a lot of extra disks.
• Better Performance from the Start: Due to their unique design, ISE-based systems deliver 25 percent more performance per drive than typical storage systems.

Taking A PowerNAP

ISE Storage Blade is the only enterprise-class network storage product to incorporate industry-standard Wake on LAN technology. It enables you—manually, through scripts, or via an application—to power down your system and then power it back up in just 60 seconds. While the ISE Storage Blade system is "sleeping," it utilizes less than 25 watts of power, just enough to listen for the command to wake up.

An independent report from IDEAS International—based on the SPC-1/E results—recently validated that using PowerNAP can save a typical organization more than 60 percent on energy costs.

The system's PowerNAP feature is valuable for any situation in which you do not need your storage system powered up 24x7, such as:

• Target for backup to disk or disaster recovery.
• Production storage for a remote site with standard hours of business.
• Archival storage.
• Standby system for use during peak activity.

PowerNAP also is useful for quickly and correctly powering down your system during data center power loss or degradation events. And it can help you meet federal and state mandates for power conservation.

Self-Healing for Less Waste

ISE technology includes preventive and self-healing capabilities that significantly extend the life of its DataPacs and the disk drives within those DataPacs.

• Reduced heat and vibration reduce disk errors.
• Preventive maintenance and ANSI T10-DIF detect and correct errors before they cause a failure.
• Self-healing technology automatically repairs disks, platters, or heads without any human intervention.

The result is 100 times the reliability of a typical disk drive. With a significantly longer life expectancy, fewer disks are required and fewer end up in landfills, which also means less energy and resources are needed to transport them. It's a win for X-IO customers and a win for the environment.