  This manuscript provides a model to characterize the energy savings of
network coded storage (NCS) in storage area networks (SANs). We consider
blocking probability of drives as our measure of performance. A mapping
technique to analyze SANs as independent M/G/K/K queues is presented, and
blocking probabilities for uncoded storage schemes and NCS are derived and
compared. We show that coding operates differently than the amalgamation of
file chunks and energy savings are shown to scale well with striping number. We
illustrate that for enterprise-level SANs energy savings of 20-50% can be
realized.
