ONStor Inc., recently announced the launch of their new Cougar 6000 series NAS gateway and claim:
“Cougar’s advanced multi-core storage network processors are built into a highly available “cluster-in-a-box” design offering 18 cores per filer. This delivers high throughput, smallest footprint per rack unit, excellent power and cooling efficiency, and low cost per terabyte. This enables enterprises to process more data for less and stay in their current data centres longer.”
ONStor and NetApp are head on competitors in the Network Attached Storage business so I thought that I would follow through and find out why ONStor make their cooling and power efficiency claims:
The Hot Aisle asked a few pertinent questions:
How many Watts per TB does Cougar use? ONStor were able to give a really good answer to this question that clearly demonstrates that their design decision to use low power components paid off in the final product.
“Given the lower power draw of a single filer (300W max) compared to competing products, the Watts per TB is very good. When the Cougar filer is used in an ONStor Pantera solution (Cougar filer + 42TB storage), Watts per TB is ~15, which is significantly lower than the competition. For example, the NetApp FAS 3020 is greater than 50 Watts per TB.”
That adds up to a staggering 2.1 KW extra power load from a similar sized competitive product. Depending on the PUE of your Data Center (say an average modern one at 1.6) this is a total annual energy saving of nearly 30 MW hours. Depending on where you buy your electricity that works out at a $10,000 per annum increase in our electricity bill for the NetApp. I bet that the ONStor design decision to use low power components does not add even $100 to the total product costs!
Is there any special energy efficiency mode like in the Copan offering that allows parts of the equipment to power down?
“Yes, the Cougar product has several energy efficent modes to minimize power consumption. These include low speed operation of system fans when ambient temperature is below 40º C, low power consumption by idle memory, and putting idle processing cores into low power mode.” [40º C = 104º F]
What is the recommended operating temperature range of Cougar? (For example can it operate at high temperatures such as those found in fresh air cooled sites or sites that set the return air setting above 24º C and use economizers)?
“Yes, Cougar can operate in fresh air cooled sites. The recommended operating temperature of Cougar is 0º – 40º C” [104º F]
Wow, we really have a vendor who gets it. Regular readers of The Hot Aisle know that increasing the return air setting can enable free cooling and economizers to run for more of the year thereby reducing cooling costs.
Are there any special features that make the product specially efficient in it’s use of cooling?
“The efficiency in cooling is a direct result of the overall power consumption of approximately 280W per filer. Since the system power consumption is quite low, the only type of cooling required is forced air. The filer does not need more exotic types of cooling such as active heat sinks on large parts.
Additionally, the Cougar design incorporates variable speed fans. During normal operation, the fans spin at about 60% of their maximum RPM, which results in lower power draw. In the event of a temperature condition (e.g. outside ambient above 40º C) or a failed fan, the fans are then automatically turned up to full speed.
It’s also important to mention that the Cougar file does not require any exotic forms of cooling such as active heat sinks that would then be single points of failure. The Cougar filer employs N+1 redundant fan cooling, meaning that one fan can fail and the remaining fans will still adequately cool the system.”
How might Cougar fit into an environment with hot or cold aisle containment?
“The recommendation would be for the front of the Cougar (i.e. logo side) to be on the cold aisle side. Cold air is pulled in through the front and then exhausted out the back, which would then be the hot aisle side. Given the low power draw of Cougar, the differential between intake and exhaust temperature is less than 5º C.”
Overall a significantly better than average environmental performance and a firm that really understands data center integration and has made the effort to get it right.
For more information, please visit www.onstor.com.
Comment by RZB on 19 July 2008:
I think that we need to re-think this a bit.
ONStor power saving is minimal as the ‘low power’ design relates only to the controller chassis. The difference is X86 architecture vs MIPS RISC….perhaps 100 watts difference in total controller power consumption for the equivalent performance.
Other features such as fan speed control and the controller operational temperature range seem to be much the same.
The bulk of power consumption is still in the disks and the associated JBOD chassis …. and it will be much like any other competitive system. Disks will require much the same operational environment on all systems and require stabilized temperature environment.
Having said that… architecturally, the ONStor is a nice system.
Comment by thehotaisle on 19 July 2008:
Yes the bulk of the power used is in the disks hence my comment about Copan. Nevertheless the ONStor uses 2.1KW less power than an equivalent NetApp, that is significant – as per the math in the article.
Steve
Comment by thehotaisle on 19 July 2008:
Yes the bulk of the power used is in the disks hence my comment about Copan. Nevertheless the ONStor uses 2.1KW less power than an equivalent NetApp, that is significant – as per the math in the article.
Steve
Comment by Storage_Bob on 13 April 2009:
I must disagree with the notion that spinning down hard disks to conserve power is a “good” think. Hard disks do only three things in their lifetime: read, write and die. You hope that it doesn't do the last one before you've had time to make a backup. With current technology, you only know if a drive is good while it's spinning. Once it's spun down, you never know if it will ever spin up again. COPAN doesn't actually solve that problem, i.e. guarantee 100% that the drive will spin up again. Their patented disk aerobics are to confirm the SHA hash and checksums before you spin down the drive – it does nothing to “repair” a failed drive. Even Seagate's secret sauce in the Xiotech ISE won't guarantee 100% recovery in a failed case.
Comment by thehotaisle on 13 April 2009:
Bob
That is a very good point except that if the disk hasn't been spun up for a while then the data ought to have been backed up then all we see is a delay to fixing the problem. A high performance disk will use a Mega Watt hour of electricity in it's lifetime (including cooling etc.. at a PUE of 2.5). That makes not spinning down disks rather expensive.
Steve
Comment by thehotaisle on 13 April 2009:
Bob
That is a very good point except that if the disk hasn't been spun up for a while then the data ought to have been backed up then all we see is a delay to fixing the problem. A high performance disk will use a Mega Watt hour of electricity in it's lifetime (including cooling etc.. at a PUE of 2.5). That makes not spinning down disks rather expensive.
Steve