SNIA Emerald Program

Welcome to the SNIA Emerald Program website.

Training scheduled for Emerald Specification

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What: Training - SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency
             Measurement Specification, for use in Energy Star
When: Week of June 24, 2013 (all times US Mountain Time)
   June 24: 1:00 - 5:00 PM: Enterprise Storage Systems 101
                        (optional session)
   June 25 - 27: 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Specification training
Where: SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, CO, USA
    Hotel:  Book a room including breakfast & internet,
at Colorado Springs Marriott for $125.00 USD per night.
Training Cost: $495. SNIA members: $295
                            Free to Green Storage Initiative members
Target Audience:
- Storage vendor company test and measurement engineers
- Independent industry labs participating in USA EPA Energy
    Star Data Center Program
- Labs offering SNIA Emerald testing services
- EPA recognized certifying bodies for the Data Center Program
Laptop software requirements for classroom exercises:
- Microsoft Windows 7 or Windows XP
- Microsoft Excel 2007 or 2010

Contact: emerald-training@snia.org

~~~ Register Today ~~~

New! -- SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 and the User Guide for the SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 are now available.

The purpose of the SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) Emerald Program is to provide public access to storage system power usage and efficiency through use of a well-defined testing procedure, and additional information related to system power. The measurement procedure, the SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification, was developed and released, and is maintained by the Green Storage Technical Working Group (GS-TWG) under the guidance of the Green Storage Initiative (GSI) of the SNIA. Use of the specification with the intent of posting the Results to the SNIA Emerald Program central repository and obtaining a SNIA Emerald Program trademark and logo requires the results to be used in accordance with the SNIA Emerald™ Program rules, which are available on the Test Data Report Template.

The SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 and User Guide for the SNIA Emerald™ Power Efficiency Measurement Specification V2.0 are now available!

The revised specification includes a new active workload IO profile named hot band, commonly called "hot-banding." In combination, the SNIA Emerald specification provides a vendor-neutral power efficiency test measurement set of methods and the SNIA Emerald Program provides an industry-wide repository of measured test data.

The new SNIA Emerald "hot band" IO profile provides a workload that considers the contribution of read caching. This workload consists of a mix of different IO sizes and access patterns with a skewed access across a range of blocks. This skewed access tends to hold data in cache and creates "cache hits" for improved throughput and reduced power consumption. Many storage array deployments today feature larger cache sizes than a few years ago. The SNIA Emerald specification also retains the random and sequential read/write workloads.

The SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification consists of the four elements: Taxonomy, Test Methodology, Test Metrics - Idle Measurement Test, and Test Metrics - Active Measurement Test. The V2.0 specification adds the "hot band" IO profile to the Active Measurement Test for Online and Near-online storage system taxonomy classification.

The User Guide for the SNIA Emerald Power Efficiency Measurement Specification offers practical guidance for those planning and using the Mesaurement Specification to test products and submit test results to the SNIA Emerald Program.

SNIA will conduct a multi-day training class and lab in Q2 2013 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs. The training will cover the SNIA Emerald test setup, data collection, and reporting with storage systems in a lab environment. Skilled professionals that should attend include test engineers, independent test labs, test auditors and certifying bodies. The training is open to the industry. Interested parties should send an email to emerald@snia.org and follow this website for more details.

The SNIA Emerald Program is sponsored, operated, and promoted by the SNIA GSI. The SNIA is a non-profit, international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers, systems vendors, industry professionals, and end users. The GSI is responsible for managing the SNIA Emerald Program, providing input and guidance to the GS-TWG, and general marketing of energy efficiency activities within the SNIA and the storage networking industry.

Why use the Emerald Program? Read more here.

The SNIA Emerald Program recognizes the following SNIA Emerald Program Participants who have tested products and submitted those test results for publication: