Some storage vendors are spilling the beans on setting highly efficient storage systems over at Environmental Leader.

Rackable System focuses on using energy-efficient components. These include low-wattage hard drives which use 7 to 8 watts instead of 12 to 14 watts; power supplies with up to 96.5 percent power efficiency; and low-voltage processors and memory.

Better yet, they might get even more energy efficient in the near future if SSD prices keep tanking. InternetNews tells us...

Sun Microsystems followed quickly behind, brashly predicting every device it will ship will have the flash technology by the end of 2010. Such big name support illustrates why SSD, which uses memory chips instead of rotating platters for data storage, could drive one of the biggest storage changes in decades.

There are already indications that solid state drives are moving down market, as far storage servers go.

"The technology is already going beyond the commerce and trade transaction worlds," Patrick Wilkison, vice president of business development at SSD manufacturer STEC, told InternetNews.com. STEC supplies the drives used by EMC in its high-end Symmetrix and midrange Clariion arrays.

...STEC expects all major storage arrays will support SSDs by April 2009. "Consider that our flash-based SSD line just came online in early 2007, and OEMS are already pulling it in," Wilkison said. The technology, he added, requires a great deal of qualification effort by storage vendors.

Read the rest here.