Emerald Program

SNIA Emerald Specification

The SNIA Emerald™ Program Power Efficiency Measurement Specification, is a storage specification developed and maintained by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and supported by the Environmental Protection Agency’s EnergyStar program. The specification provides a publicly accessible repository of vendor storage system power efficiency measurement and related data. The measurement data is generated through the use of well-defined standard testing procedure prescribed in the SNIA Emerald™ Specification. This data quantifies storage system power efficiency for several types of workloads and helps IT professionals make storage platform elections as part of an overall Green IT and sustainability objective. The program is open to the industry at large, including non-members of SNIA.

SNIA has proactively established an industry working relationship with the EPA with their initial focus on data center products. SNIA’s ongoing collaboration with the EPA has helped to shape the Energy Star Data Center Storage (DCS) Specification. The EPA DCS specification references the SNIA Emerald™ Specification as the test and measurement methodology - See http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_crit_data_storage_centers

External links

• SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification Approved specification for measuring power efficiency of storage systems http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/standards/curr_standards/emerald
• SNIA Emerald™ Program homepage provides information on power efficiency, product measurement results, training, etc. for storage systems http://www.sniaemerald.com
• SNIA Green Storage Initiative homepage provides information about energy efficiency and conservations for networked storage technologies www.snia.org/gsi
• EPA ENERGY STAR Data Center Storage program http://www.energystar.gov/products/spec/data_center_storage_specification_version_1_0_pd
• SNIA Emerald Program: published data product power efficiency data http://www.snia.org/emerald/view
• EPA ENERGY STAR Data Center Storage: published product power efficiency data http://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-data-center-storage
• European Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in Data Centre http://iet.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/ict-codes-conduct/data-centres-energy-efficiency
• The Green Grid homepage – energy efficient IT http://www.thegreengrid.org/
• 80 PLUS homepage and information about power supply energy efficiency http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx
• Transaction Processing Performance Council – includes power efficiency data http://www.tpc.org/
• Storage Performance Council – includes Energy Extension http://www.storageperformance.org/home
• Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation – benchmarks for servers and other computer systems that include power efficiency http://www.spec.org

Industry Standards

• INCITS/ANSI ITS 39 https://standards.incits.org/a/public/group/its39
• ISO/IEC SC 39 http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/technical_committees/other_bodies/iso_technical_committee.htm?commid=654019

Other EPA Links

• http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_crit_data_storage_centers
• http://www.energystar.gov/products/spec/enterprise_servers_specification_version_2_0_pd
• https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=new_specs.uninterruptible_power_supplies
• http://www.energystar.gov/products/spec/large_network_equipment_specification_version_1_0_pd

Timeline

• 2007 SNIA organized its focus on energy efficient storage, best practices, industry education and requirements with the formation of the Green Storage Technical Working Group (TWG) and Green Storage Initiative (GSI)
• 2008 SNIA Green TWG engages with EPA on Server and Storage ENERGY STAR Specifications. SNIA, SNIA GSI and SNIA Green TWG, advocates for a separation of ENERGY STAR specifications for servers and storage due to the unique differences and characteristics of servers and networked storage.
• 2008 SNIA Green TWG held two engineering lab workshops to validate test and measurement methodologies for several classes of storage systems. Additionally, characterized the size and impact of enterprise storage features for reliability, availability, supportability, capacity optimization, and data protection.
• 2009 SNIA Green TWG releases the Green Power Measurement Technical Specification, detailing the measurement of Idle storage system power (GreenPower_V018)
• 2009 EPA announces it plans for an ENERGY STAR Specification for Enterprise Data Storage Equipment. The initial framework drafted was based on the EPA ENERGY STAR Server specification and references the SNIA GreenPower_v018 specification (idle measurement) and future pending SNIA specific active system test and measurement procedures.
• 2009 SNIA with ECOS measure a wide sample of storage power supplies to validate their test methods and protocols in conjunction with EPRI as part of the 80PLUS program.
• 2010 EPA Releases the first draft of the ENERGY STAR for Data Center Storage, a working draft to engage industry discussion and to review storage system power consumption measurements.
• 2011 SNIA releases SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Specification version 1.0.0 which expands on Green Power Measurement Specification including comprehensive Taxonomy for classes of storage, Idle and Active Test Measurement for block IO, and Capacity Optimization Methods presence tests.
• 2011 EPA Releases draft 2 of the ENERGY STAR for Data Center Storage, which cross-references the SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification Version 1.0
• 2011 SNIA GSI launches the SNIA Emerald Program for publicly posting Test Data Reports and providing industry-wide support for any manufacturer or lab testing with the SNIA Emerald Test Specification.
• 2012 EPA Releases draft 3 of the ENERGY STAR for Data Center Storage, which references the SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification Versions 1.0
• 2013 SNIA releases SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Specification version 2.0.2 along with tools for running tests, correlating test data, and preparing test data reports.
• 2013 EPA concludes industry discussion with draft 3 and releases to the industry ENERGY STAR for Data Center Storage Version 1.0 with an effective date of December 2, 2013 to receive test submissions.
• 2014 EPA Releases an update to ENERGY STAR Data Center Storage Version 1.0. Vendor product test data is received and posted in the EPA program listing repository.