HP has introduced “green” storage technology that can cut storage array power and cooling costs in data centres by 50 per cent.

Introduced at the HP Americas StorageWorks Conference, the new Adaptive Infrastructure offerings include thin provisioning and performance enhancements for the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family, tape drives based on the Linear Tape Open (LTO) 4 standard, new DAT 160 tape drives for small and medium businesses, and the first HP StorageWorks tape product developed exclusively for HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosures.

According to analyst firm StorageIO Group, storage currently accounts for 37 per cent to 40 per cent of overall data centre energy usage from hardware. With the new HP storage products, a customer with a monthly storage electric bill of $3,000 could save as much as $18,000 a year in power and cooling costs.

The HP StorageWorks EVA4100, 6100 and 8100 midrange disc arrays improve power efficiency for customers by up to 45 per cent compared to previous EVAs, with performance improvements of up to 24 per cent.

Using advanced hardware and software technologies such as EVA Dynamic Capacity Management (DCM), Vsnap and FATA disc drives, the new EVAs help customers optimise hard drive utilisation, eliminate unnecessary HDD storage disc purchases, shrink their carbon footprint and efficiently manage IT resources and storage provisioning tasks.

Tape continues to be the most energy-efficient storage technology for long-term data retention – requiring neither power nor cooling – while maintaining data integrity for 30 years.

The next-generation HP Ultrium and DAT tape formats are proven technology that offer the lowest cost per terabyte and have withstood some of the most extreme conditions on the planet.