4.13.2007 - 03:30pm ET

(CSRwire) LONGMONT, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 13, 2007--COPAN Systems, the leader in persistent data storage based upon its intelligent, enterprise-class enhanced MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) platform, today announced that Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest public utilities companies in the United States, has qualified COPAN's Cool Bytes(R) Enhanced MAID storage solutions for its energy efficiency incentive program. Enhanced MAID devices are the first enterprise storage devices to qualify for the incentive program as part of PG&E's Non-Residential New Construction program. The incentive applies to both replacement and new storage purchases.

COPAN introduced the term Cool Bytes to bring attention to the rapidly emerging energy crisis in the data center. The costs associated with powering and cooling storage devices is rapidly approaching those for servers. The company has incorporated green initiatives into product planning and development for the past 4 years.

"We're pleased to be the first storage company to qualify our products for the PG&E energy efficiency incentive," said Roger Archibald, senior vice president of Marketing and Business Development for COPAN Systems. "In addition to the immediate capital expenditure savings from our unprecedented density, reliability and floor space savings, customers will quickly begin to realize that the energy efficiency inherent to our Cool Bytes Enhanced MAID architecture enhances their own environmental initiatives in their data centers."

"Data storage growth rates for many businesses exceed 100% per annum, so a technology that supports that rate in a more energy efficient manner will help our customers manage their costs," explained Brad Whitcomb, vice president of Customer Products and Services for PG&E. "By providing financial support, we hope to ramp up industry adoption of this technology."

The first end-user customer to take advantage of this incentive is a large social utility website headquartered in California that facilitates the exchange of information across social networks. The customer installed 448 terabytes of Cool Bytes Enhanced MAID and immediately began to recognize the cost savings in power and cooling versus their traditional storage. In addition, the PG&E incentive program will reward them with approximately $15,000 to reflect the money saved in terms of reduced energy consumption.

In addition to the extensive number of data centers in the Bay area that are serviced by PG&E, the utility company hopes to leverage this program across the state of California, and other regions in the United States. PG&E is leading a consortium of utility companies in the data center dense regions of the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Northeast. The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), TXU Electric Delivery, Austin Energy, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and NSTAR, have all joined the coalition.

According to a recent Gartner report authored by Michael Bell, "through 2009, energy costs will emerge as the second-highest operating cost in 70% of worldwide data center facilities." In fact, Kevin Kettler, CTO at Dell, has stated that already in Dell's data center, storage energy consumption is almost at parity with that of servers. This approximates 37% for storage and 40% for servers, with the remainder attributed to telecom and networking(1). Today's data center managers are clamoring for ways to save money by not only lowering their capital acquisition costs, but also by saving on their energy bills.

Independent Testing

San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), also a current COPAN customer, provided independent power consumption testing of COPAN's Enhanced MAID. In collaboration with PG&E, a model was developed to calculate a customer's potential savings from implementing a MAID solution. The findings confirm that the very low power requirements of the Cool Bytes Enhanced MAID architecture combined with the extremely dense storage capacity delivers an impressive 91 terabytes (TB) of capacity per kilowatt (KW) consumed, the highest density in the industry. This compares to an average power density for Fibre Channel disk products of approximately 4TB per kilowatt and an average rate for standard SATA disk products of 17TB per kilowatt.

"Rapid growth in data archiving at SDSC is coming from non-traditional sources: digital preservation, sensor fields and collections shared by a community of users," said Don Thorp, San Diego Supercomputing Center. "Unlike the traditional archives, this data is expected to be read frequently from a variety of APIs and portals.
Accessibility and reliability are critical. This large amount of data is too important for tape, and too costly to store on spinning disks.

We turned to COPAN and the 220TX VTL. With the additional capacity in a smaller footprint, the required accessibility characteristics and improved reliability, it created a new storage tier that economically met our service level agreements. We have measured the power consumption on all our storage and only the 220TX solution will scale to cover our forecasted requirements given the limitations of power and floor space in the computer room. Lastly, energy conservation is not only good business. It is good citizenship."

How to apply

PG&E customers considering replacing existing storage or adding COPAN's Cool Bytes Enhanced MAID solutions to their data centers, and who want to apply for the incentive program, can access the application and procedures at: http://www.pge.com/hightech.

About San Diego Supercomputer Center

For more than two decades, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) has enabled breakthrough data-driven and computational science and engineering discoveries through the innovation and provision of information infrastructure, technologies and interdisciplinary expertise. A key resource to academia and industry, SDSC is an international leader in Data Cyberinfrastructure and computational science, and serves as a national data repository for nearly 100 public and private data collections. SDSC is an Organized Research Unit and integral part of the University of California, San Diego and one of the founding sites of NSF's TeraGrid. For more information, see www.sdsc.edu.

About COPAN Systems

COPAN Systems is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class, enhanced MAID storage solutions that unlock the value of long-term, persistent data. Its energy efficient storage solutions reduce power and cooling costs in the data center with enhanced MAID's unique ability to spin the hard drives only as needed to dramatically conserve power and lengthen the product lifespan. The company is privately held with investments by Austin Ventures, Globespan Capital, Pequot Ventures, and Credit Suisse. COPAN Systems' storage solutions have been shipping since March 2004, with customers spanning the healthcare, financial, government, media, and service provider industries. Solution implementations include backup/restore, archive, and disaster recovery. More information is available at http://www.COPANsys.com

(1) Drew Robb, "Storage Turns Power Hungry," Enterprise Storage Forum, October 20, 2006


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