For decades, having the performance, capacity and processing speeds meant adding more server systems and therefore providing an efficient need. Now, businesses are re-thinking this old outdated model to encompass a major new role, energy efficiency. With cost for energy surging into the billions industry wide, most companies are re-evaluating their datacenters to reduce the cost in maintaining such large entities.

For 2009, projections show companies will spend more money for power and cooling than the server hardware in their datacenters. Big businesses are looking to the component level vendors in the push towards more energy efficient technologies; to drive and improve old technologies and to alleviate energy cost bottlenecks. One of the biggest concerns in today’s data centers are the drives.

Based on a typical dual-processor 450W 2U server, drives account for the third most power consuming component of the server. Below is a chart that illustrates the wattage allocation to specific components: