Enterprise storage watchers have been keeping an eye on MAID (massive array of idle disks) technology, not only for energy savings, but also keep lower priority data off costly, high-performance storage systems. Companies like Copan, for example, have made a name for themselves by offering arrays that shut down disks when they're not in use.

Now the industry is looking to minimize the performance penalties inherent to MAID, according to Gary Watson, CTO of storage vendor Nexsan. Hence, MAID 2.0. In an article over at Computer Technology Review, he writes:

Here’s how MAID 2.0 works: data center managers set multiple (usually three) settings on their drives. The first setting saves a moderate amount of energy by unloading the drive heads but maintaining full disk spin. This is the most commonly used setting during times of regular application usage. The next setting slows down disk spin rates and can save significantly more energy. The tradeoff at this setting is an approximate 15 second recovery time. This is used typically for less critical data retrieval, depending upon the individual needs of the user. The final setting saves the most energy and stops spinning the disks altogether. Unlike traditional MAID, however, disks don’t have to wait for a given RAID set to be allowed to spin up; they just spin up as needed. This results in sub-minute recovery times for data retrieval, well within acceptable parameters of even the most demanding data center professionals.

He then goes on to give advice on getting IT managers to invest in greener gear, especially now that they're subject to massive amounts of greenwashing.