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compaction

Definition

compaction

1) In a data center, compaction is the reduction or consolidation of hardware to make better use of physical floor space. Although the goal of compaction is to be cost-effective and maximize real estate, increased hardware compaction puts more demands on power consumption and cooling requirements, two major cost elements in maintaining a large data center.

2) In storage area management (SAM), compaction is the automatic removal of expired data from a storage area network (SAN) to condense the existing archive and make room for new data.

Related glossary terms: indemnification, real-time operating system (RTOS), single point of failure (SPOF), Andrew, tin whiskers, server blade, Unix, pizza box server, Uptime Institute, Inc., HP-UX

This was last updated in April 2007

Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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