Saving power: Pulling (Temporarily) unused disks from DAE's???

Hi,

CLARiiON already has such a feature called Disk Spindown which will spin down (qualified) drives if they are not bound in a RAID group. It also spins down drives which are not actively used by any application (in other words, drives with LUNs bound on them will also spin down due to inactivity).

This is available with FLARE R29 code and as a consequence this feature is available for CX4 arrays only. See "An Introduction to EMC CLARiiON CX4 Disk-Drive Spin Down Technology — Applied Technology" whitepaper on Powerlink for more details.

Hi Avi,

I know that the CX4 line has Spin down (But only for SATA) and we will be using that feature on our CX4 SAN as well...

The question was for our CX3-380 series however...

Can we reduce the power of unused DAE's?

Why keep FC and SATA disks spinning if they really don't need to spin?

This would save customers a gigantic amount of money (Think of power, cooling but also the life expectancy of a disk) and would give EMC a great edge over competitors!

Additional benefit for EMC & customers would be less disk replacements, as unused disks would not be spinning and are thus less likely to break down! (This saves repair runs & downtime)

Message was edited by: Fredster

I understand your point.

If you pull out unused disks from the array, you will see an "E" icon for the 'missing' disks, but this will not cause any problems in data access to other LUNs in the array.

Hi Avi,

Thanks for your answer!

What is the chance that EMC would make a SPIN DOWN algorithm in a new FLARE code (Or some loose extension one could load extra)???

This would give EMC a nice & green ECO friendly edge over competitors (Saving the planet and some money for customers etc etc)

This new extension should ofcourse be made for all current types of SANs (CX series) and should be able to not spin up unbound disks (Both FC & SATA)...

Is there a way for customers to get feature requests like this to EMC engineers?

Hi,

Another question:

Would a NaviCli CRU_ON_OFF procedure SPIN DOWN a disk???

Thanks!

You are in the right forum to point out these issues. This forum is monitored by EMC engineers and managers. However, the final implementation and inclusion of features such as these will depend on resource availability and priorities assigned to other such functionalities. But rest assured that your case will be forwarded to the appropriate people.

Hi Kelleg,

I thought it wouldn't SPIN DOWN the disks indeed

I realise also it is a very dangerous command to use and it is very easy to shutdown the wrong disk, but I do appreciate the warning

I do hope however, some EMC engineers can pick up this SPIN DOWN unused disks idea.

We have several DAE's out of use on our primary site, which means they are also out of use on our secondary site.

I am obviously not sure how much power it would save exactly per disk (or DAE) in a shutdown state, but for instance:

A CX4-120 (Completely filled with 600 GB FC 15k3 disks) costs well over 8000 euro's a year to run (Calculating with 0,15 eurocent/KWh and 50% DCE). Switching off one or more DAE's until needed could easilly save hundreds of euro's a year...

As Avi said, there are quite a few EMC engineering managers that watch these forums.

glen

What about filling out an official RFE ? (Request for enhancement)

You can find the procedure here: Home > Support > Request Support > Request a Product Enhancement > Terms and Conditions

I created an RFE: Tracking ID 5239045

Message was edited by: RRR

Hi RRR,

Great idea!

I posted a request as well (More is always better )

Thanks!

Fred

Exactly