Any one have any ideas regarding going green for small/medium companies, i want to start a carbon offsetting program, by planting trees depending on the amount of hardware/power used any one know any companies who can help with this or any good calculators to measure our carbon foot print?

You might want to check out this site:

http://carbonfund.org

Their calculator can be found here:
http://www.carbonfund.org/Calculators/

I hope that points you in the right direction.

I am not sure where you are located, or to what extent you control your own facilities, but Red Rocks Data Center has taken an interesting approach. They started by doing a series of audits, trimming unnecessary loads, then they installed a cooling system enhancement that utilizes outside air whenever possible, and subsequent steps in progress are moving toward complete grid independence. While this is a lofty endeavor, I think they are really on the right track to being able to claim green status with actually meaning a decreased carbon footprint.

Almondo

Sorry i dont have any control over the facility, where currently investing in virtualization of our infrastructure and offering it to our clients as well as virtual desktops. Where also starting to use 'Green' servers and offering them to our clients.

Ive looked into green datacenters like http://www.aiso.net/ but there just so darn expensive, thanks for the links il check them out

yea they are expensive

Any one have any ideas regarding going green for small/medium companies, i want to start a carbon offsetting program, by planting trees depending on the amount of hardware/power used any one know any companies who can help with this or any good calculators to measure our carbon foot print?

I am also thinking in the same line:-) If all companies in this world start to participate in Going Green Program then it will be a real help for the future generations to come.

Can someone let me know the common carbon offsetting programs followed?

Planting trees is great, but trees can only act as a Carbon capture and Oxygen release device when they've grown and in most cases this process takes 10 to 20 years. Also how effective trees are at carbon capture and oxygen release is sketchy. So the marketing department trumpeting their carbon neutrality, when the seeds have just been planted, might be a tad premature.

To anyone serious about "going green", forget about cheap stunts like planting trees or paying someone to plant some trees on your behalf. That's a sham, but I am not against the planting of trees, as that's good. Just don't plant some trees and then trumpet about being carbon neutral, because you're not.

If you want to go green, look at ways to ensure that your NOC is powered by clean renewable energy, rather than fossil fueled energy. If possible install some solar panels to run your PCs for yourself and your staff. Install solar lighting. There's heaps of things you can do to increase your efficiency and be more "green". Just think outside the box of buying a green certificate.

You probably won't have much say as to the power that runs your servers, as that's handled by the DC or the colo etc, and you can't add solar panels to their roof. What you can do there is install additional solar panels, to generate clean power that goes back onto the grid, equal to the fossil fueled power that your servers use. That way you are offsetting dirty power for clean power.

I know the it's typical for the hosting industry to look for a quick fast fix to going green, so buying green certificates is how hosts claim carbon neutrality. I get that. It's quick, and hosts can market the green tag to their heart's content. But the only problem with that is it's a sham, a lie, as planting a tree does not make you carbon neutral, no matter what your flashy little green certificate says. Planting trees might make offset your current carbon emissions, in 20 years, but not now.

Respect this company for these steps. Sounds good

You might want to check out this site:

http://carbonfund.org

Their calculator can be found here:
http://www.carbonfund.org/Calculators/

I hope that points you in the right direction.
Thanks for the link

For a start you could use lower power systems in your office such as notebooks or desktops that use the ITX standard and Atom processors due to their higher energy efficency.

If you own the building where your office is located then you can install your own solar power system. This is expensive initally but should pay off in the long run especially if you have a system that produces enough power to sell back to the power grid.

You might want to check out this site:

http://carbonfund.org

Their calculator can be found here:
http://www.carbonfund.org/Calculators/

I hope that points you in the right direction.
Thanks for your share.

Sorry i dont have any control over the facility, where currently investing in virtualization of our infrastructure and offering it to our clients as well as virtual desktops. Where also starting to use 'Green' servers and offering them to our clients.

Ive looked into green datacenters like AISO but there just so darn expensive, thanks for the links il check them out

Greetings,

We run a sustainable hosting operation based on 100% solar energy - our servers are actually colo'd at AISO and we have an excellent relationship with them. Our offering is a bit different - Xen para-virt VPS and cPanel are our platforms. Our cost is considerably lower, maybe we can help you in some way? Our site: wireandlight.com. We'd be happy to talk about a possible /partnership/reseller relationship if you can use our capabilities. Cheers!
Doug
Wire & Light Hosting

I believe hostgator went green

I believe hostgator went green

They sure did. A lot of hosts are doing it :D

For a start you could use lower power systems in your office such as notebooks or desktops that use the ITX standard and Atom processors due to their higher energy efficency.

If you own the building where your office is located then you can install your own solar power system. This is expensive initally but should pay off in the long run especially if you have a system that produces enough power to sell back to the power grid.

That's good for the small low-power office machines, but let me make one suggestion for the high-end stuff: get a mainframe!

Mainframes use less power per equivalent computation and also reduce the material usage (use less copper,iron,zinc,etc) and harmful chemical usage in building the machine. They also last much longer reducing the strain on landfills.

An you say your into virtualization: mainframes have been doing that since at least the 70s so it's not only more stable but more efficient at it too.

Think about it....

I think one of the major ways hosts can go greeen is to start implementing recycling technologies for thier end of life hardware, to insure they are re-cycled and not disposed of.

Another way would also be to start utilizing processors and MB's that are higher efficiency, it might be NICE to boast the fastest CPU's but just about ever core released has lower wattage versions, that should be taken advantage of.

There is also something i do at home to recycle un unsed current, it's called a
Powerhouse, it basically recycles electricity that you pull from the grid that would normally be dumped back to the provieder, so when you power something on the extra voltage is stored in capacitors and then fed back into the home grid. We have reduced our electric consumption almost 25% by this method alone.

I have some ideas.

Put your screensavers on.

Use black themes, white consumes more energy. Use black google for searches.

Buy small solar gadgets and slowly power your office with them.

Put some plants in your office, going green is actually also putting more green in your enviroment. Make a small garden if you can.

Drink allot of water and stop watching tv.

Buy a kindle

Eat less

Dont go to sleep to late

Walk more

Drop your car and buy a electric one

Change your offices PCs to EEE atom boxes

Switch to laptops if possible

Take your printer to the shooting range

Buy home remote controllers

Buy automated electric switches that are turned off when not in use, powersavers, kill a watt, etc

Dont use to much cloth when your in home

Buy a wind wheel

If going solar start with your garden, the garden should only have solar lights

Put your dog on a diet

Many hosting companies are offering green hosting plan nowadays.

I'm trying to figure out how to make my hosting company 100% green. I already use extremely efficient servers (its a mac mini hosting company), but i live in an extremely cloudy area.

Is solar still viable without a ton of sunlight?

How hard is it to run on solar power during the day and cut over to utility power at night?

Is solar still viable without a ton of sunlight?


Solar isn't really viable anywhere (~5-15% efficiency) - but in cloudy areas it should do ok - you'll just need more surface area (might have a look at solar concentrators to make that more cost-effective - mirrors that amplify the sunlight before it gets to the solar cells).


How hard is it to run on solar power during the day and cut over to utility power at night?


Typically you'd run a dual-stack system whereby you would always be running on both the utility power and the solar power - if there wasn't enough solar power the utility power would fill the gap, and if there was too much solar power it'd get sent into the utility grid - thereby ensuring a stable power supply.

PS: If you have access to both solar and wind, wind is definitely the place to start as it'll give you a much higher ROI than solar - typically in cloudy places there's enough wind to do that - especially at altitude (eg: higher than your building and surrounding trees).