When Jenn Duff heard that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, wanted to build yet another data center in Mesa, Ariz., she was immediately suspicious. “My first reaction was concern for our water,” Duff said. The desert city of half a million residents was already home to large data centers owned by Google, Apple and other tech giants, and Duff, a city council member, feared for the city’s future water supply.
So Storj benefit is not only regarding carbon footprint but also to use less water.
Traditional data centers use water for cooling, competing with local communities for this scarce resource. Storj’s decentralized approach eliminates the need for traditional data centers, significantly reducing our water footprint and helping to preserve local water resources.
Why aren’t we focusing on how storj prevents world wars? In a recent study, it was proven that in all the years that storj has been operating, there wasn’t any world war.
All seriousness aside, let’s get to the joking part to lighten the mood: Drop every current PR effort (massive corporate clients, ai, sustainability, use-what-you-have) and just put out a home backup solution.
There’s nothing special about test data. It’s stored for a purpose, and is paid for, like any other data.
As for sustainability: for me it’s enough that they’re keeping old HDDs out of landfills (and to some extent reducing the need for new ones to be manufactured). They could probably be an honorary CDI member!
Furthermore, recent surveys of Storage Node Operators (SNOs) have concluded that about 21% of all capacity comes from drives that are already being run and powered.
Approximately 21% of the capacity in the network comes from older drives that were brought back online specifically for the purpose of becoming storage nodes.
So the 79% of the SNO are adding more than 20 kg CO2e/TB HDD and these SNO using SSDs are adding 160 of CO2e/TB.
According https://storjstats.info, the total capacity is around 79PB… so it leads to ~1250Tn CO2e estimated footprint without the power consumption impact.
As a result, it makes economic, durability, and carbon sense to extend the life of drives well beyond their 3-5 year lifespan.
The way I read it, I see 21% for shared online space + 21% for brought back online + (100-21-21) 58% for new drives. It’s a big unclear skimming the paper…
SSDs are used to cache a small amount (~1%) of HDD storage. More likely repurposed personal drives or bought used.
in the Appendix A, the same paper gives another distribution 69-16-15. Here it is stated that only a 15% of “SNOs have created new nodes specifically for the purpose of earning rewards”. I really doubt it.
Actual composition of the Storj networkThe Storj network is primarily composed of SNOs who are using Storj to increase utilization of nodes that are already provisioned and being powered. Based on surveys, this represents 69% of the current network–a number that we expect to increase over time, as it is the most profitable configuration for SNOs.
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However, some (roughly 16%) have brought previously inactive nodes back online for a few years. While these nodes don’t incur net new carbon related to manufacturing, the model assumes that the full carbon cost of power of running the drives should be assigned. It is also assumed that these drives will have a lower effective lifetime, as most are already a few years old.
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Finally, some percentage of SNOs (approximately 15%) have created new nodes specifically for the purpose of earning rewards. While this is not actively encouraged, and is the least profitable configuration, nothing prohibits this configuration. For this part of the network, the full life cycle carbon costs have been assigned to the drive.
The information is based on a surveys, how else we may know the intention?
Actually I have an idea - we may create a topic here and ask for the manufacturing date of each drive. This may be more interesting, because it would be more obvious are there repurposed drives used.
Indeed, quite different figures. Do they come from different surveys or it’s a difference of definition? First is about drives and appendix is about nodes, not super clear tbh.
So the 79% of the SNO are adding more than 20 kg CO2e/TB HDD and these SNO using SSDs are adding 160 of CO2e/TB.