Hello everyone,

I am looking for a hosting company that is solar powered, or at least uses carbon offsets. The catch, the service needs to be able to accommodate at least one large traffic spike (over 1 million visitors per day to drupal).

I've heard AISO is good. Do you all have any recommendations? I'm especially interested in a cloud solution.

I am unsure that there are places that you are looking for. Perhaps you need to find out about those that are housing their servers in Greeland (or is it Iceland?) where 98% of all power is from Geothermal?

AISO are very good and definitely worth a chat to.

There's a few green hosts out there, googling them might bring em up. Aiso is a good start :)

AISO is certainly a worthy contender. Hostgator also has gone green.

All Hostgator are doing is buying renewable energy credits, so at the end of the day, not really very green compared to other options out there.

Why not host your website in Quebec? 98% of our electricity is Hydroelectricity. 0 carbon emissions.

AISO used to be pretty terrible. I went through a trial with them early last year and had to abandon it due to the usual permission problems on shared hosting for software like Wordpress.

I came back for a "green" client later after AISO got on the ball, and I have no major complaints now. Theirs is not the easiest or most convenient system to navigate (too many segregated accounts and control panels, some crappy interfaces), and I wish they would more prominently and quickly notify customers of service disruption.

My full review of AISO:
http://www.newlocalmedia.com/blog/76-green-hosting.html

Why not host your website in Quebec? 98% of our electricity is Hydroelectricity. 0 carbon emissions.

True green hosting isn't just about emissions, but would be about the impact on the enviroment.

I personally don't have an opinion, but I know there is a lot of debate about the effect of Dams, etc... on the natural river life.

Why not host your website in Quebec? 98% of our electricity is Hydroelectricity. 0 carbon emissions.

Perfect idea to the OP. Globally Quebec isn't the far out. The US will have great fast ping times and just like having a server in the US, European ping times will be decent. Looks like you've found a good spot in the middle of the globe where a hosting company can truly be green without having to put up there own wind turbines, solar panels, or hydro electric mechanisms.

Isn't green hosting just a big marketing gimmick?

Do people really shop for a 'green' provider?
I think all companies, 'green' or not would love to be green as it is does save them money?

Isn't green hosting just a big marketing gimmick?

Do people really shop for a 'green' provider?
I think all companies, 'green' or not would love to be green as it is does save them money?

You are joking right? Do you realize how big the United States is on going green. Huge. If a consumer was looking for a host and they found a green host no doubt they would choose it.

Why would they choose the host that uses a boatload of energy powered from a plant when they could choose a host that has wind powered or hydroelectric powered?

Isn't green hosting just a big marketing gimmick?

Do people really shop for a 'green' provider?
I think all companies, 'green' or not would love to be green as it is does save them money?

I think the more people going 'green' the cleaner our planet is so green-hosting is actually very cool thing.

Partially joking.

I think being green is great, nothing against our planet. However doing the things like solar panels and pure wind is a bit overboard in my opinion. I really see green hosting as a marketing ploy and that is it (except for the tree huggers - who do not see it that way, and they are right to their opinions).

I have lots of green initiatives in our companies and we are always trying to make our planet a better place, so nothing against that.

I got the wrong impression. I thought you were saying what is the big deal with Green Hosting. Sorry I jumped.

The big deal to me is the simple fact that we have the most catastrophic event in history on our hands in the Gulf of Mexico due to oil drilling. To offset the damage that this is doing to the environment every Datacenter woudl have to buy 100 acres and put up turbines.

Also, solar panels. How are they not more redundant then a cable that runs power. How is a wind turbine less redundant then a powerplant. All it takes is a little bit of sunshine and some wind and you ahve the most redundant Network/Datacenter in the country. You could withdo with all generators.

I have to agree with HS-CB Matt. I've have had customer asking me for Green Hosting for years. There are great companies offering this in both North America and Europe. Most of Denmark is running on wind power, and Iceland is geothermal powered, so any datacenter there is green by default. As for North America, both Quebec and BC are almost 100% hydroelectric, so datacenters there also green by default. It might be a sales gimmick to some, but webhosting is one place where we can go green without making any major industial retrofits. Every host should offer it.

AISO are very good and definitely worth a chat to.

Why do you think so?

I've been doing some research on this as well. I just found taproot (taproothosting) out of oregon. It appears that is actually 100% powered by wind farms. Their price is a little cheaper than aiso. They run cpanel which is cool.

Cheers!

I know ipage is wind power and they are well known for their green power

I have to agree with HS-CB Matt. I've have had customer asking me for Green Hosting for years. There are great companies offering this in both North America and Europe. Most of Denmark is running on wind power, and Iceland is geothermal powered, so any datacenter there is green by default. As for North America, both Quebec and BC are almost 100% hydroelectric, so datacenters there also green by default. It might be a sales gimmick to some, but webhosting is one place where we can go green without making any major industial retrofits. Every host should offer it.

Washington, USA is also largely hydroelectric. It's nice!

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a hosting company that is solar powered, or at least uses carbon offsets. The catch, the service needs to be able to accommodate at least one large traffic spike (over 1 million visitors per day to drupal).

I've heard AISO is good. Do you all have any recommendations? I'm especially interested in a cloud solution.

Actually, Iceland's electricity supply is 70% hydro and 30% geothermal - but nonetheless the principle mentioned stands and it is 100% renewables-based.

MTYWDC - did you ever get an answer to your needs?

There are a couple of good places to start.

1. Greenpeace published some high level material on green IT, primarily aimed at the cloud and the impact of cloud computing but the principles apply to any data centre use. Their main conclusion is to push telecoms and DC operators in the direction of renewable energy sources – they compare the Yahoo DC near Buffalo where the grid has lots of hydro with the Apple one in North Carolina which is mostly coal based. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2010/3/make-it-green-cloud-computing.pdf

2. The Green Grid is a cross industry body looking at greening Data Centres. http://www.thegreengrid.org/ They developed the PUE efficiency metric (and others also around water usage for example). The PUE of a Data Centre is its total energy usage divided by its IT usage. PUE greater than 2 is awful, under 1.5 is not bad, industry bests are under 1.1. It’s not a perfect measure (I install more efficient servers carrying the same IT workload and my PUE goes up as my non-IT load stays constant) but it’s probably the best energy efficiency measure we have.

The bottom line if you value carbon emission reduction is to look for a DC based in an area with lots of renewable energy. If not, then do they have any local renewable power generation (e.g. solar PVs, biomass etc), but watch out for greenwash here – 10kW of solar panels on a 5MW DC in a coal fired area does not make the DC green !

For solar AISO is probably your best bet.