Newhouse Farm

[Dubber Dan]

Before anyone accuses me of advertising, I'll be up front and say I run a green hosting company.

The aim of this post is to highlight to the readers the different ways that green web hosting is delivered (that I dub Different Shades of Green), so that you may all make a more informed choice.

In the past few years, many in the computing industry have affirmed their commitment to helping to develop a sustainable world. These days, the number of options for Green Web Hosting has risen along with consumer’s awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions and offset energy usage.

So many businesses now offer green hosting; that the market has become saturated with companies claiming to offer eco-friendly provisions. The trouble is that not all companies go to the same lengths, not all share the same commitment to providing the greenest services possible. Due to these many different shades of green, it’s difficult for the consumer to know which is the best choice of company to ethically provide the right technology combined with social responsibility.

When considering green hosting, it’s important to find out just how green the company actually is. There are many different ways that companies can provide green hosting. In terms of powering the services they offer, there are two main ways that green hosting companies receive their energy. They either purchase a Renewable Energy Certificate, which insures them that the power they receive was produced in a way that isn’t detrimental to the environment. The other way is for the green hosting company to generate their own power directly from renewable energy such as solar and wind power.

Other companies have purchased woodlands and promise to ensure that the number of trees absorb more carbon that is used by the powering of servers. Of course, this is just a way of offsetting the use of power, but the power is still produced in traditional ways, hungrily gobbling up precious and finite resources.

Clearly, not all companies go to the same lengths to provide the greenest hosting services available. Those that run their services, servers, offices and data centres on renewable energy are much greener than those that close the barn door after the horse has bolted with dirty energy bought with guilty carbon credits.

Committing to greener business practices doesn’t stop at using power. To be green also means building relationships with suppliers and business partners that are also green. What’s the point in taking the time and energy to ensure that your company is green, if everyone around you is choking the planet?

If your green hosting company is really committed to cleaner energy, eco-friendly commerce and ethical business standards, then there are lots more they can be doing.

Using recycle paper in the office, recycling printer cartridges and toners and recycling as much office waste as possible will make an impact. Staff that commit to walking or cycling to work also demonstrate their green credentials. The work environment is virtually alive with opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint, everywhere you look there’s a way to get greener. From eco-friendly light bulbs to composting your organic waste and turning the printer off at night, every little helps.

When choosing the right green hosting company for you, there are many different shades of green. Is your green hosting company really green, or just playing at it?
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Lightbeing Creations - Solar powered, green web hosting and ethical website design
Solar Powered Directory - Green, Ethical, Holistic Web Directory

[retrotecchie]

You have completely ignored the issue of greener hardware!

Take a server rack that uses 5kW/h to run but the hosting company get their power from a company providing a figure of say 20% of their energy from renewable sources. That means 1kW of server supply is green and the other 4kW isn't.

Now, take the same rack, apply new 'greener' technology and make said rack run on only 1kW of power. Even if the power company supplied 100% of it's energy from fossil sources, the amount of fossil energy used is a quarter of the amount used in the 5kW example.

And this is easy to do....because 'green' begins by reducing energy consumption in the first place.

We used to have a rack of 3 Compaq Proliant Servers....fully loaded with redundant power supplies and every drive bay filled with a 36Gb SCSI hard disk. One acted as a file server, one as a mail server and one as a domain controller. Add on all the necessary interconnection hardware, and the fans to keep the drives cool...then air-condition the rack room....

Total power consumption 4.3kW, 24/7 365 days a year...or approximately 37.6MW/h a year to run. Doesn't matter who I get the power from, that setup has a massive carbon footprint. In the last three months, I have replaced the system with a couple of custom build boxes running exactly the same software and applications and providing the same services, but using far lower power, and hence 'greener' technology. A file server will work as well on a single core low power CPU as it will on a pair of PIII Xeon processors....at a much reduced power consumption. A set of three SATA hard drives per system gives me far less drive power consumption compared with 12 in a Proliant system....and quadruple the storage. The CPU only uses 20 or so watts of power instead of 250 or so for a pair of Xeons. And heat.....dramatically reduced so I don't need the air-con on except for a day or two of +30C temperatures outside in the summer.

Total power consumption now is less than 800 W/h or about a fifth of what it was before. Carbon footprint now reduced accordingly and my power needs over the year slashed by 80% with a saving in energy costs too. Performance of the system as a whole far exceeds the old system, the whole thing is about 30dB quieter as there are 17 less fans!

That is how hosting companies can make a real change to being greener...never mind the 'greenwash' recycling the odd toner cartridge or using a low-energy bulb in the loo!

And, for every P4 workstation running a 2.1GHz cpu that we've replaced with an Atom based dual core cpu and large SATA drive we've saved even more power....over 70% per workstation.

When the hosting companies offer that as their green headline.....then I'll consider them as really green....not because they compost their teabags or get 2% of their power from solar!!!
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I wish I could be what I was when I wanted to be what I am

[Hairyloon]

[retrotecchie]

We had a custom server room built when we occupied our premises, and heating and lighting installed. They put a central heating radiator in because it was marked on the plans as 'Mikes Office'. The first day we needed to put the heating on, I shut off the valves and removed the radiator as it did seem a bit pointless. If I shut the door at close of play, the next morning the air temperature in the room would be 30 degrees plus and all the temperature warning monitors on the servers would be screaming like mad. And this was in winter when the rest of the building needed the heat on during the day but it was off at night so had a chance to cool down!!

Plan A was to duct the hot air out of the top of the room and into the electronics workshop next door, allowing us to remove one radiator in there too, but we ended up putting it back in after reducing the power of the servers as they no longer heat up the server room, let alone the workshop too! Of course, the power savings I mentioned are just for the server rack....not running the aircon more than a handful of days a year saves us a lot of energy too
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I wish I could be what I was when I wanted to be what I am

[cadfael]

WOOOO!! that's one BIG-TIME shut down RT!!!
Where's that muttley icon when you need it!!
C'mon mods, we need LOADS more icons!
Mike.
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Minds are like parachutes, they only work when open.
I don't bodge, I improvise and innovate.
Dogs, logs and chainsaws.

[kermit]

[Dubber Dan]

Absolutely, there's lots more that can be done when it comes to the energy consumption. I didn't want to post links to my site, as my intention was to get people thinking beyond a glossy homepage.

The custom-built data centre we use has made great use of technology to reduce energy usage. This has been a combination of the types of servers used, server virtualisation to reduce the number of server used and make better use of those servers resources across the network.

An interesting discussion.
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Lightbeing Creations - Solar powered, green web hosting and ethical website design
Solar Powered Directory - Green, Ethical, Holistic Web Directory

[nick]