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NetBackup 5330 Appliance: Leading the Pack on Environmental Efficiency!

Phil_Wandrei
Level 3
Employee Accredited

Datacenter floor space is a lot like closet space, you can never have enough of it. My first house was built in the late ‘40s, and had tiny closets. This meant my wife got the bedroom closet, and I got the closet in the second bedroom. Over the years, we have moved and remodeled, and have always filled the closets to capacity. Datacenters are a lot like this, except 1) data center floor space is much more expensive, and 2) other areas of the building are not suitable for data center equipment.    

How Severe is the Problem? 

The challenge with limited data center resources impacts companies in two areas;

  • Cost:  power, cooling, and data center floor space are expensive.  According to Gartner,  “Energy-related costs account for approximately 12 percent of overall data center expenditure and are the fastest-rising cost in the data center”.1
  • Limited Resource Availability:  To expand power, cooling, or floor space often requires a significant amount of lead time, capital improvements, and can be a major distraction to existing operations. Nearly 85 percent of enterprises said issues with data center power, space and cooling capacity have delayed or canceled application rollouts, reduced their ability to support customers and resulted in unplanned reallocation of resources away from strategic goals during the past year2, according to IDC.


NetBackup Addresses the Environment

When we recently introduced NetBackup 5330 Integrated Appliance, we highlighted its environmentally-friendly design. While it is fairly straightforward to measure performance, scale, and resiliency, how is environmental impact measured? 

One measure and validation of a product’s energy efficiency is the United States Environmental Protection Agency program, Energy Star. Most often associated with consumer products, such as washers and dryers, the Energy Star program applies to business products. The benefit of this program is it provides an independent certification and enables businesses to easily compare products from an energy efficiency standpoint. 

Energy Star.png  NetBackup 5330 appliance is Energy Star compliant, and is the only integrated purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) with this certification.  No other integrated, or target PBBA, has this distinction! 

Not only does the appliance reduce power and cooling expenses compared to other backup appliances, but it has great density. Density is important as it supports more TBs per rack space unit (RSU) or floor space, which means greater efficiency and less cost in the data center. 

How Does NetBackup 5330 Compare?

To put the environmental impact into perspective, I compared the NetBackup 5330 to the DataDomain 990, a target deduplication appliance. Based on published information (columns B, C, and D), I calculated the TB per RSU (B/C) and Watts per TB (D/B). 

NetBackup 5330 Comparison to DataDomain 990

 

Usable Capacity* (TB)

(B)

Total Rack Space Units (RSU)

(C)

Total Power (Watts)

(D)

TB Per RSU

(B/C)

Watts Per TB

(D/B)

DataDomain 990 518.4 76 7,040   6.8 13.6
NetBackup 5330 219.2 10 2,442 21.9 11.1
                      * Adjusted to reflect Base2.  (i.e. 1TB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes).
 
 
Based on the above calculations; the NetBackup 5330 appliance is more efficient than the DD990: 
  • 3.2 times more space efficient. In the same amount of space, NetBackup 5330 can store and protect 3.2 times more data than the DataDomain 990. Or, if reducing space is a goal, NetBackup 5330 will require 69% less space than a DD990. 
  • 18% more energy efficient. NetBackup 5330 will use 18% less power for the same amount of capacity. 

storage and power savings_0.png

Note: as a target appliance, the DD990 would require backup software and media servers to run the software. This would increase DataDomain’s hardware and software costs, increase its power and cooling requirements, and require more rack space. In other words, I have taken a conservative approach with DataDomain’s power, cooling, and density usage compared to NetBackup 5330. As an integrated appliance, the NetBackup 5330 includes the media server, backup software, and storage.   

Conclusion

The NetBackup 5330 delivers performance, scale, and resiliency, AND addresses the environmental factors of power, cooling, and floor space. NetBackup 5330 is the only Energy Star certified purpose-built backup appliance. For organizations looking for an industry-leading backup solution that reduces floor space and power consumption, the NetBackup 5330 is the perfect choice. 

To learn more about the NetBackup 5330 integrated appliance, two resources are;

 

Footnotes:

  1. Gartner Press Release, “ Gartner Says Energy-Related Costs Account for Approximately 12 Percent of Overall Data Center Expenditures”, September 29, 2010. 
  2. IDC WHITE PAPER, “The Datacenter's Role in Delivering Business Innovation: Using DCIM to Enable a Common Management Approach”, Richard L. Villars, November 2012, #237737.