Cost of operating data centers rises

The energy costs of operating data centers are high, and on the rise. IDC forecasts that IT spending required just to cool and power spinning disk drives will reach $1.8 billion by the end of this year, and over $2 billion in 2009. IDC also estimated that more than 49 million hard disk drives in external storage arrays were in use by businesses around the world last year, with corporate customers boosting storage capacity by an aggregate rate of 50 percent a year. One solution to this vexing problem may be NAND flash-based solid-state storage that offers a power-saving substitute over physical spinning drives. Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and EMC Corp. all have plans to add solid-state across their server portfolios.

For more on this new option:
- check out this Computerworld.com article