Today, Pure Storage® announced the first-of-its-kind energy efficiency SLA for Evergreen//One™, our storage-as-a-service (STaaS) offering. This makes Evergreen//One the only STaaS offering that guarantees a maximum number of actual watts per tebibyte (TiB), enabling customers of all sizes to benefit from continuous innovation, guaranteed performance, scalability, no planned downtime, and now also energy efficiency.
A First for Energy Efficiency
Companies often claim to be the first to deliver a product or solution that will revolutionize the market, change the way you work, or make your life better than you can imagine. In reality, most of these announcements are hyperbole, simple tweaks to existing products or major exaggerations to grab a news headline.
When it comes to IT and data centers, some such transformational technologies have been virtualization, cloud computing, 5G, adaptive AI, applied observability, and now increasing sustainability.
Leading analysts agree on the importance of long-term sustainability goals:
“Sustainability has become a key pillar of IT strategies today, with an emphasis on reducing power and space to drive operational efficiencies and ultimately reach long-term ESG goals. By introducing an energy efficiency SLA into its storage-as-a-service offering, Evergreen//One, Pure Storage is providing an added layer of transparency for data storage, delivering a guaranteed and unique measurement of actual watts per TiB that will support a sustainable IT infrastructure.” –Scott Sinclair, Practice Director, Infrastructure, Cloud and DevOps, Enterprise Strategy Group
Efficiency SLA Details
Evergreen//One, an enterprise-grade storage-as-a-service subscription, delivers a guaranteed and unique measurement of maximum number of actual watts per tebibyte (TiB) for enterprise block storage.
Watts are based on a daily average of actual power consumed over a completed service month.
With regards to calculating efficiency, “TiB” means the amount of the reserve commitment plus the 25% buffer deployed with the system, or the total estimated effective used capacity for the applicable systems (whichever is greater).
For example, if you’ve deployed a //Block Performance service tier with a reserve commitment of at least 300TiB in your data center, you can expect power consumption not to exceed 3W/TiB. The watts/TiB numbers in the table below assume Pure is able to achieve 2:1 data reduction for Performance, Premium, and Ultra tiers, while the Capacity tier assumes no data reduction. Actual W/TiB used will be lower as typical customers achieve 5:1 data reduction.
If the monthly average of //Block Performance is higher than 3W/TiB, Pure will determine the number of days where the daily average is greater than 3W/TiB and provide service credits for those days.
We will also undertake any remediation actions to meet the SLA, which may involve:
- Densification by replacing deployed data packs with larger data packs to meet the SLA or
- Consolidation of many smaller arrays into one large array
- We also offer a one-time “opt out” option where the customer can take a one-time credit and opt out from making necessary changes to the arrays.
A Pure Storage partner’s view:
“We’re pleased to offer our customers access to sustainably-focused solutions like Evergreen//One,” said Suzette Carty, head of global ESG at CDW. “Given CDW’s commitment to protecting the environment, we applaud Pure Storage for launching this new option designed to help organizations of all sizes to reduce energy consumption while also benefiting from operational efficiencies, such as greater agility, financial flexibility and energy savings.”
What Is a Guaranteed SLA?
With Evergreen//One, Pure owns and is responsible for all the hardware, software, and maintenance. This service is supported by the same product portfolio that end customers get in traditional Pure Storage deployments, but as a subscription backed by SLAs.
To understand SLAs better, check out these blog posts:
- 5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Storage as-a-Service
- Real Storage as a Service vs. Broken Subscriptions
- SLA vs. SLO. vs SLI: What’s the Difference and Why They Matter
Evergreen//One is committed to obligations around:
- Availability
- Capacity
- Performance
- New! Efficiency
The service monitors the environment and is held to a promised outcome for the storage service tier to which you’ve subscribed. If we don’t meet the availability, performance, capacity, or energy obligations, we (a) give you service credits and (b) take actions to fix the issue. For example, we proactively ship more storage arrays and set them up at no cost to you so that you always have a 25% capacity buffer for on-demand usage. We offer a 99.9999% uptime commitment and the Evergreen architecture enables Pure to ensure there is no scheduled downtime for routine upgrades or maintenance. In the case of energy efficiency, we will undertake any densification or consolidation efforts
See below for an overview of the Evergreen//One guarantees.
Pure Storage Is Green Storage
Eighty-three percent of the executives interviewed in a 2021 IDC survey agree that sustainability is one of the most important criteria for IT buying decisions (2021 IDC Sustainability and Buyer Value survey). They understand that many organizations are selecting vendors and partners with like-minded sustainability goals. Some of these goals are operational and the responsibility of the IT staff. The pressure to meet these goals can be reduced if they have a more efficient infrastructure.
Some of the top business drivers for sustainability are to improve operational efficiency, cost, and brand reputation. As-a-service models enable organizations to improve operational efficiencies, including:
- Asset decommissioning built into the offer
- IT staff no longer responsible for tracking assets and managing recycling efforts
- Trade-ins that can be used to offset new equipment costs to improve budget metrics
- End-of life equipment that can often be refurbished or recycled to meet environmental targets and financial benefits
In addition, Pure architecture is built on sustainability and efficiency principles and enables organizations to lower energy usage in data storage systems. A sustainability assessment in our Pure1® AIOps platform provides visibility into the energy usage of Pure Storage systems. It helps customers measure and manage their energy use and much more. For example, customers can use Pure1 to assess how to improve power efficiency by metering watts per unit of data on the array that can be read back. This works hand in hand with the energy efficiency SLA.
Read the Evergreen//One Product Guide for more information on service level agreements.
For more information on the efficiency SLA, watch this Digital Bytes video.
