Lab test: Infortrend EonStor B12S Iometer results

Enterprise storage is typically fast, reliable, large, and heavy, and consumes a good amount of energy. Infortrend's EonStor (see Mario Apicella's review) is fast, reliable, thin (1U), and a scant 45 pounds with 12 disks. All because it uses 2.5-inch, Small Form Factor SAS drives instead of the usual 3.5-inch disks.

Better yet, Mario's tests show the EonStor draws significantly less energy than like-configured arrays based on 3.5-inch drives -- about 40% less. The key thing, of course, is that it doesn't sacrifice performance or reliability features. Spinning at 15,000 rpm, the little SAS drives hold up their end, and uptime is backed by redundant RAID controllers, power supplies, and cooling modules.

Below are the results of Mario's Iometer tests and associated power consumption figures. By way of comparison, he's measured the power draw of similarly configured 3.5-inch arrays at 380 watts when idle, i.e., when not moving data (spinning but no reads or writes).

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RAID5 volume of six drives