Environmentally friendly hosting?

godskitchen

I am looking for an Irish based hosting company that uses only renewable energy to power not only power their offices but their data center and servers.

I cant find one! I would rather keep the business in the country, or at least the EU, really dont want to have to use a US company!

Any ideas?

Thanks.

mneylon

As far as I know none of the Irish data centers would fit your criteria at present.

steve-hosting36

We're in discussions with AirTricity but they are very tough to deal with. We have many environmentally friendly measures taken in our facility, including simple things like low voltage lighting and we're evaluating a heat exchanger option to allow us to heat the office space with the data centre hot air.

We've also deployed Blade / SAN based solutions which are some 30% as power hungry as the 'old fashioned' way of delivering solutions.

godskitchen

Good news Steve, I have heard AirTricity can be awkward.

I need a service that uses 100% sustainable/renewable, preferably from wind/sun/hydro, I would have problems with wood chip if I didn't know the source of forest and how it gets to the powerstation/generator.

I hope you can get something in place Steve, I would much rather my money go to an Irish company, when you do I am pretty sure you will clean up.

mick.fr

Well your request is nice, but how do you want to find something like this in a country that don't believe in nuclear power neither wind/solar power?
And regarding the americans they have the highest standards against pollution in the world, even the EU does have the level of regulations they do have.

Give it a couple of years and maybe Irish people will understand having a nuclear power plant is not as dangerous as it looks when well controlled.
When Irish people/politicians are saying (Based on a survey last year) they do not want nuclear power because it pollutes, what should we say with ESB burning thousands and thousands of gallons of petrol to produce an irreliable electricity power stream in this country?

Rant is over :-)

mneylon

mick.fr wrote: »

And regarding the americans they have the highest standards against pollution in the world, even the EU does have the level of regulations they do have.

Yet they still manage to guzzle more oil than anyone else and drive huge cars. Don't you find that a bit contradictory?

mick.fr

blacknight wrote: »

Yet they still manage to guzzle more oil than anyone else and drive huge cars. Don't you find that a bit contradictory?

Well yes for sure a car with 8.6l engine does not help
But their regulations are stronger than us.
A bimmer in the US pollutes less that the equivalent in europe.

godskitchen

mick.fr What about the fact that there is only 70 years of mineable uranium left, thats with the current amount of power stations around the world, so the figure will only go down as we build more NP Stations.

Then there is the whole thing of trusting a for profit company not to cut corners, and the CO2 that emerges from mining the stuff in the first place.

For the UK or France, I do think NP is the only option right now, they have large centers of population. However I dont think Ireland needs to take that route, we have plenty of wind off the coast and its not being used. Plus we can keep the tech within the country, how many nuclear scientists do we have living here?

We have the expertise here to make wind power a real option, maybe not the full answer but a good option.

aidan_walsh

If this is going to turn into a debate about alternative fuels, then the thread will be going elsewhere.

mneylon

mick.fr wrote: »

A bimmer in the US pollutes less that the equivalent in europe.

A what?

steve-hosting36

I think he means 'beemer' - ie: a BMW Automobile.

mick.fr

godskitchen wrote: »

mick.fr What about the fact that there is only 70 years of mineable uranium left, thats with the current amount of power stations around the world, so the figure will only go down as we build more NP Stations.

Then there is the whole thing of trusting a for profit company not to cut corners, and the CO2 that emerges from mining the stuff in the first place.

For the UK or France, I do think NP is the only option right now, they have large centers of population. However I dont think Ireland needs to take that route, we have plenty of wind off the coast and its not being used. Plus we can keep the tech within the country, how many nuclear scientists do we have living here?

We have the expertise here to make wind power a real option, maybe not the full answer but a good option.

Isn't recyclable? I thought that's what Areva was doing, I may be wrong, I am not an nuclear expert.
Regarding the Wind power, yes definitely Ireland should go this road.
I am pretty sure I heard of French TV a couple of weeks ago that there is 16000 "fans" already in France.
The only problem is that you need a lot to provide power to a town like Dublin just as an example, and it is ugly. Especially in a small country like Ireland, will be difficult to hide them.

mick.fr

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

I think he means 'beemer' - ie: a BMW Automobile.

Yes a BMW thanks

steve-hosting36

The biggest problem with wind is that it is an 'unstable' source - and presents challenges to the grid ie: it's a fairly 'bursty' source of power, sometimes generating lots, sometime none at all). To maintain stability in the grid, you need more conventional sources that can take the slack when the wind isn't blowing - something like Nuclear would seem an ideal compromise.

axer

There seems to be a number of renewable energy webhosts out there. I think you will have to abandon the thought of getting an Irish renewable energy webhost, at least for now anyway.

Here are some:
http://www.strato-hosting.com/ - supposed to be 100% renewable by January next. (DE)
http://www.greenesthost.com/ (US)
http://hostpapa.com/ (US & CA)
http://www.drak.net/ (US)
http://www.thinkhost.com/ (US)

I have no idea if any of the above are any good.

Bananna man

AirTricity are selling up and the deal should be complete by mid 2008 so you might have better luck then.

godskitchen

Thanks for all the info guys, i could talk for hours about the merits of different power froms, but I dont think this thread is right for that, its good to see other people are thinking about it though. It strikes me most people are doing very little, if at all admitting to the problem.

I hope a Irish hosting can get to the level I am looking for soon, every aspect of your company will be under the microscope soon, I am just preempting it.

daymobrew

I think that Digiweb's new data centre (beside ITB) is going to be quite 'green', but I don't know any more details. They recently submitted a planning application for the data centre and if you check Fingal CoCo web site you might find out more.

pburns

It's hard enough to get a reliable web host who will answer the phone when you have a problem without insisting they use only renewable energy!

Would the reliability of the power source not be a huge factor in ensuring a stable hosting environment? I'm all for environmental awareness and efficency but this is Ireland - we need to crawl before we can walk and we have more pressing issues to address. Given how far behind we are in such basic areas as waste management I think what you're asking for is - whilst well-intentioned - a bit unrealistic, preposterous even...

mneylon

pburns wrote: »

Given how far behind we are in such basic areas as waste management I think what you're asking for is - whilst well-intentioned - a bit unrealistic, preposterous even...

I'd have to agree

We switched to AirTricity in the office and have been trying to recycle as much as possible, however getting the recycled (and non-recyclable) waste collected is painful - the waste management companies don't seem to care

steve-hosting36

Airtricity is a pretty 'reliable' option in that it's the exact same power as the ESB grid / supply on the same infrastructure.

godskitchen

If its not asked for it wont come, its as simple as that.

mneylon

godskitchen wrote: »

If its not asked for it wont come, its as simple as that.

So, out of interest, would you pay a premium for "green" hosting?

steve-hosting36

More aptly perhaps - should it cost a premium to deliver it?

Our blade/SAn solution is a fraction as power hungry as equivalent servers, with some simple measures we're taking in the office, we can reduce our consumption of paper, ink and other consumables, we've gone hi-efficiency low voltage lighting almost throughout the building and are about to install pir activated low voltage aisle lighting in the data centre itself. Couple this with power from (hopefully) airtricity, and a system to heat the office space from the dc heat, and we'll be extremely close to neutrality.

All of the measures above actually save us money in the medium to long term also.

Goat Boy

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

Our blade/SAn solution is a fraction as power hungry as equivalent servers

Its true - blades do save perhaps 7-8% in terms of shared fans, power supplies etc, so yeah, the fraction is maybe 9/10 However, if you take advantage of the small form factor, and cram a cabinet full of hundreds of cores, it's really not very friendly to the environment.

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

Couple this with power from (hopefully) airtricity,

Airtricity can't guarantee that the electrons you receive are the exact electrons energised by renewable power, just in the same way that power purchased from the UK via the interconnector contains nuclear power. Its sophistry, really but a step in the right direction.

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

a system to heat the office space from the dc heat

Er? If you remove that heat, your air conditioning becomes very inefficient, and thus guzzles much more power. The higher the delta T between the delivery and return air, the more efficient everything runs. Plus its near-impossible to retrofit a CHP, especially to a live, production datacentre. Would love to hear more details if you do somehow manage this!

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

we'll be extremely close to neutrality.

What's your plan to neutralise the emissions from your two 6+ litre cars?

While it might be possible to be truly green as a datacentre/host on a very small scale (as the GreenestHost guys show), its going to be impossible for some time for a large, proper datacentre. In terms of power efficiency, its a dirty business.

When you factor the heat lost during oil/peat/coal burn, losses during high tension transmission, the transformation down to MV then LV, losses via internal cabling and then the various AC-DC and DC-AC steps, the end power efficiency to each server is only around 6% of the energy generated at the power station. Hideous really.

mneylon

Goat Boy wrote: »

Its true - blades do save perhaps 7-8% in terms of shared fans, power supplies etc, so yeah, the fraction is maybe 9/10 However, if you take advantage of the small form factor, and cram a cabinet full of hundreds of cores, it's really not very friendly to the environment.

That's one of the things the sales guys forget to mention!

Goat Boy wrote: »

Er? If you remove that heat, your air conditioning becomes very inefficient, and thus guzzles much more power. The higher the delta T between the delivery and return air, the more efficient everything runs. Plus its near-impossible to retrofit a CHP, especially to a live, production datacentre. Would love to hear more details if you do somehow manage this!

A number of companies are offering an "air recycling" option for data centres these days. I've no idea how well the systems work, but I know they're out there

Goat Boy wrote: »

What's your plan to neutralise the emissions from your two 6+ litre cars?

ROFL - nice catch

Though the topic under discussion is the data centres not the people who work there....

steve-hosting36

Our 'real world' experience on the power savings from Blades/SAN/VMware instead of the 'old way' is the order 1/20th the power consumption (yes, 1/20 or about 5%). So we can genuinely claim to be 20 times more 'green' on a like for like basis to racking 'old fashioned' rack mount equipment. As for core density, that doesnt effect power efficiency, in fact putting all the machines closer together makes them easier to cool.

On the DC CHP, there are a number of systems, as Michele confirms, and we're looking at our options.

On airtricity, at least buying from them ensures you are going some way to funding wind power, etc.

Also, as Michele says, this is a discussion about green hosting, not my personal life, WADR.