"Energy efficiency in the data center is a growing concern for technology vendors and their customers today", stated Dave Reinsel, IDC group vice president, storage and semiconductor research. "We are beginning to see a shift in IT focus where energy consumption is becoming a critical component of a viable and sustainable IT strategy. In the past companies have traditionally concentrated on optimizing computer resources and storage operations, but today they are taking a more holistic approach that includes everything from data centre designs, to air versus liquid cooling, to DC power."

Dave Reinsel is among the IDC research analysts responsible for a new study, "The Real Costs to Power and Cool All the World's External Storage", an in-depth analysis of enterprise storage worldwide and the costs to power and cool external storage arrays from 2002 to 2012. Within the study, IDC reveals the total number of spinning disks in data centres today and estimates the real costs associated with powering and cooling these disks, as well as the commensurate carbon footprint. With an aggregate worldwide electricity cost of $0.07 per kilowatt-hour last year, IDC estimates that the total amount spent on powering and cooling these drives exceeded $1 billion in 2007.

Since its introduction late last year, the 5730 has become the ruggedized storage solution of choice for many Dot Hill customers in the military, government and telecommunications sectors. Based on Dot Hill's R/Evolution architecture, the 5730 is a highly flexible, dynamic storage system that scales to support up to 108 mixed SAS/SATA disk drives, and up to 108 terabytes of capacity leveraging 1 TB SATA disk drives. Offering a small rack footprint of only 2U for increased floor-tile density, the 5730 with DC power is NEBS (Network Equipment Building System) Level 3 certified and designed to meet the rigorous MIL-STD-810F requirements of the United States Department of Defense for land, sea and air deployment.

"Introducing support for DC power was the next logical step in our product road map as Dot Hill continues to evolve and strengthen its offerings and as organizations look to improve data centre energy efficiency", stated Dana Kammersgard, Dot Hill's president and chief executive officer. "The 5730 with DC power provides the right blend of performance, flexibility and proven ruggedness through its NEBS certification and MIL-STD compliance, providing our OEM customers with the best-in-class RAID solution."

Among the many customers leveraging the 5730 is Tuscaloosa County in Alabama. The county needed a storage solution that offered maximum expandability and high availability - with fast and easy access to a large database of records - as Tuscaloosa archives millions of records including deeds, marriage certificates, legal judgments and incorporation documents. Tuscaloosa partnered with Crabtree Computer Services and Consulting Inc., based in Birmingham, which recommended the county deploy the 5730 storage solution powered by Dot Hill technology.

"We have been impressed with the performance of the solution overall", stated James Tullidge, IT director, Tuscaloosa County. "We found the solution very easy to set up and manage. In particular, we have experienced improved data availability and business continuity via the snapshot technology. This capability creates a point-in-time virtual copy of data that the system can roll back to, in the event of data loss or corruption", he explained. "Additionally, we are leveraging the volume copy capabilities to replicate data to alternate sites for disaster recovery." James Tullidge explained that disaster recovery has taken on a whole new level of importance following Hurricane Katrina. The county experienced a significant amount of loss as a result of the disaster, and in past years has been the recipient of federal monies for post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

The 5730 is a key member of the Dot Hill Unified Architecture methodology, which promotes a consistent user experience in both the entry-level and midrange markets. This approach results in a common set of component field replaceable units (disk drives, power supplies), a common Data Management Services infrastructure, a common graphical user interface/operation and a common data structure. Using this common architecture, customers leveraging the entry level Dot Hill 2730 Fibre Channel storage array can perform an easy data-in-place upgrade to the higher performance of the 5730.