Data Center Infrastructure Becomes More Eco-friendly Due to Advancements in Data Storage
In the rapidly growing world of digitalization, data centers are expected to produce a staggering 2.5 billion tons of carbon emissions by 2030. However, advancements in high-efficiency hard-disk drives (HDDs) are playing a significant role in creating sustainable and AI-scale data centers.
The focus is on increasing storage density and performance while lowering costs and power consumption. Key technologies include Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which enables the production of drives like Seagate’s 30 TB HAMR HDDs, significantly increasing capacity at a lower cost per terabyte, ideal for warm-tier storage in hyperscale environments.
Other notable HDD innovations involve enhancements such as ePMR, OptiNAND, and ArmorCache, which boost sequential write speeds and metadata handling, improving performance and efficiency in demanding workloads like backups. These advancements contribute to a 6x cost advantage over all-flash solutions for certain data tiers, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and energy use, thus supporting sustainability goals.
In the context of AI-scale data centers, HDDs are strategically used for "warm-tier" storage where large volumes of data are kept with moderate access latency requirements. This tiering approach pairs latency-sensitive "hot" data on SSDs with HDDs for scale and sustainability, optimizing overall infrastructure cost and energy efficiency.
Furthermore, emerging architectures such as NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) and integration with GPU-direct storage improve data throughput and latency in AI workloads while maintaining the high-capacity, energy-efficient storage advantages of HDDs.
As the digital infrastructure that powers our world continues to expand, it inevitably increases resource demand. Organizations need to invest in higher capacity, low-power HDDs to contribute to more sustainable data centers. The higher-capacity, lower-cost-per-terabyte HDD solutions provide the foundation for today's extensive data lakes.
Moreover, the digitalization is a key component of global sustainability. Leaning into these new sustainable practices and innovations will go a long way toward sustaining our planet for future generations to enjoy.
Sustainable electronics aim to minimize environmental impact, extend product lifespans, minimize e-waste, and reclaim valuable materials from old drives, contributing to a more sustainable supply chain. Decarbonizing manufacturing processes and substituting high-GWP chemicals in HDD manufacturing are key aspects of sustainable electronics, reducing carbon footprint and improving overall sustainability.
The emergence of a circular economy for HDDs includes introducing recycled content in components/materials, decarbonizing manufacturing processes, and substituting high-GWP chemicals, leading to more sustainable manufacturing and recycling efforts. Disaggregation of storage and compute resources allows organizations to prevent over-provisioning, improve TCO, and reduce data center footprint, maintenance, networking, rack space, cooling, and overall power consumption.
New high-density architectures and optimization capabilities in HDDs, such as energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR), shingled magnetic recording (SMR), and helium-sealed HDD technology, are driving capacity increases without increasing footprint or power profile. HDD manufacturers are developing more sustainable practices to address the challenges of increased digitalization demand, including manufacturing, power consumption, and other costs associated with sprawling digital infrastructure.
The Ins and Outs of Sustainable Electronics is a topic that discusses the importance of sustainable practices in the electronics industry, focusing on HDD manufacturing. As we navigate the exponential data growth driven by AI and large-scale cloud services, the convergence of higher-capacity HAMR HDDs, advanced caching and metadata technologies, and intelligent tiered storage designs are driving sustainable, high-efficiency data storage solutions.
Technology and data-and-cloud-computing advancements are playing significant roles in creating more sustainable and AI-scale data centers. For instance, high-efficiency hard-disk drives (HDDs), such as Seagate’s 30 TB HAMR HDDs, contribute to this goal by providing higher capacity at a lower cost per terabyte, ideal for warm-tier storage in hyperscale environments.
