What would you do with a hippy in your data centre?

Picture the scene – you are the IT man, and one day you walk into the server room to find a hippy camped in a tent.

Alarm bells start to ring at this point.

Apart from the smell, which is quite bad, you’re a bit worried about what he’s doing here and whether he’s found the loo or just made himself a spot next to the routers.

This is bound to upset HR (unless it is HR) and he’s not even wearing a security badge, just some hemp.

“What’s all this about?” you say to the hairy man.

“I’m protesting against your data centre,” he says. “You’re using too much power with this big whirring mess of cables. If you stored your data on tape you could save some power.”

You throw the hippy out, burn his tent and have him tortured by the finance team, but there’s a nagging feeling that won’t go away. Perhaps he was right…

Steve Mackey of Quantum wrote a whole 900 words on this, but we’ve cut it down a bit coz the photo was so entertaining. This is the most important bit:

In comparison to disk, even when data has been de-duplicated, tape has very few running costs. If data is not being accessed on a tape, the tape drive has no moving parts and so it consumes virtually no electricity. Tape also requires no cooling, which helps further reduce it running costs. In light of power availability and environmental concerns surrounding data centres, tape starts to look like an appealing option despite being an old technology.