The new data center design is expected to ensure that AAA NCNU meets its present computing needs, with the ability to scale to accomodate its future business needs. Under the agreement terms, IBM will deploy the data center consolidation with the end goals of reducing energy consumption as well as reducing cost, space and IT maintenance, while enhancing the efficiency and capacity of its data center facilities. IBM has supposedly been a leading advocate of green data center practices.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Green Hosting Company Planting Trees to Help Restore Forests Damaged by California Wildfires
Los Angeles, CA, September 04, 2009 -- Last month, CR8Change.org (“CR8”), a mission driven carbon neutral web hosting company, launched its Green Hosting Tree Planting program which is planting a new tree every month on behalf of every active web hosting account.
CR8Change in affiliation with American Forest’s Global ReLeaf program is working to help plant 3.2 million trees in 2009 to aid forest restoration in areas severely damaged by wildfires throughout California with additional wildfire projects in Montana, Colorado, Arizona and Minnesota. Species to be planted include giant sequoia and ponderosa pine in California, Sitka spruce in Alaska, longleaf pine in Florida and the Carolinas, red spruce in Maryland’s Appalachian Mountains, and hardwoods in Arkansas.
A mission driven company, in addition to providing affordable carbon neutral web hosting, CR8Change donates upwards of 14% of revenues to qualified reforestation and urban tree planting projects.
“CR8Change is committed to planting native trees in forest restoration projects for the range of benefits that trees and forests provide, including clean water and air, cooling shade, wildlife habitat, and the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to slow climate change,” commented James Arthur Smith, CR8Change’ Executive Director. “Thanks in part to cost savings afforded by recent innovation in server technologies and the forward thinking eco-conscious businesses who have made the switch to our carbon neutral hosting program, we are able to help fund these tree reforestation projects entirely from the revenues of our green hosting business.”
A recent report by industry analysts, Gartner, found that the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. Traditional banks of data servers storing billions of web pages require significant power. “Data centers are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. However the advent of virtualization technologies and cloud computing has helped forward thinking web hosting companies like CR8Change to significantly improve data center efficiency and reduce the total coast of ownership for server facilities. Such technological advances have helped to facilitate profitable carbon neutral green hosting at affordable prices.
With green hosting accounts starting at $7.00 per month, which includes free migration to their state of the art web servers, 150GB of disk storage; 1500GB of monthly bandwidth and the ability to host unlimited add on and sub domains; CR8Change carbon neutral web hosting accounts are cost competitive and in many cases less expensive than their non-green industry peers. However CR8Change web hosting accounts are carbon neutral and proactively helping plant millions of trees in areas desperately in need of reforestation.
Actress, model and recently new client of CR8Change.org, Naureen Zaim (www.naureenzaim.com) of Los Angles, CA. commented: “Switching my website to CR8Change.org’s green hosting program was an easy, seamless process. Knowing that my web site is no longer contributing to global warming and now actively helping reforestation projects is invaluable to me.”
Another CR8Change.org client, Sean Davey (www.seandavey.com), a fine art ocean photographer based out of Sunset Beach, Hawaii also commented: “For as little as $7.00 per month, there is no reason every website shouldn’t go green and be proactively helping create positive change!”
About CR8Change
CR8Change is a green energy wind powered hosting company that does not pollute or contribute to global warming to power its web servers. CR8Change is an Internet Hosting company offering first rate technology without gouging customers with unnecessary fees. Cr8Change donates upwards of 14% of revenues to planting a new tree every month on behalf of every active web hosting account. For additional information please visit: http://www.cr8change.org
Contact Information:
James Arthur Smith, Founder and Executive Director
Phone: 858.926.5527
Email: info@cr8change.org
Web: http://www.cr8change.org
CR8Change in affiliation with American Forest’s Global ReLeaf program is working to help plant 3.2 million trees in 2009 to aid forest restoration in areas severely damaged by wildfires throughout California with additional wildfire projects in Montana, Colorado, Arizona and Minnesota. Species to be planted include giant sequoia and ponderosa pine in California, Sitka spruce in Alaska, longleaf pine in Florida and the Carolinas, red spruce in Maryland’s Appalachian Mountains, and hardwoods in Arkansas.
A mission driven company, in addition to providing affordable carbon neutral web hosting, CR8Change donates upwards of 14% of revenues to qualified reforestation and urban tree planting projects.
“CR8Change is committed to planting native trees in forest restoration projects for the range of benefits that trees and forests provide, including clean water and air, cooling shade, wildlife habitat, and the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to slow climate change,” commented James Arthur Smith, CR8Change’ Executive Director. “Thanks in part to cost savings afforded by recent innovation in server technologies and the forward thinking eco-conscious businesses who have made the switch to our carbon neutral hosting program, we are able to help fund these tree reforestation projects entirely from the revenues of our green hosting business.”
A recent report by industry analysts, Gartner, found that the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. Traditional banks of data servers storing billions of web pages require significant power. “Data centers are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. However the advent of virtualization technologies and cloud computing has helped forward thinking web hosting companies like CR8Change to significantly improve data center efficiency and reduce the total coast of ownership for server facilities. Such technological advances have helped to facilitate profitable carbon neutral green hosting at affordable prices.
With green hosting accounts starting at $7.00 per month, which includes free migration to their state of the art web servers, 150GB of disk storage; 1500GB of monthly bandwidth and the ability to host unlimited add on and sub domains; CR8Change carbon neutral web hosting accounts are cost competitive and in many cases less expensive than their non-green industry peers. However CR8Change web hosting accounts are carbon neutral and proactively helping plant millions of trees in areas desperately in need of reforestation.
Actress, model and recently new client of CR8Change.org, Naureen Zaim (www.naureenzaim.com) of Los Angles, CA. commented: “Switching my website to CR8Change.org’s green hosting program was an easy, seamless process. Knowing that my web site is no longer contributing to global warming and now actively helping reforestation projects is invaluable to me.”
Another CR8Change.org client, Sean Davey (www.seandavey.com), a fine art ocean photographer based out of Sunset Beach, Hawaii also commented: “For as little as $7.00 per month, there is no reason every website shouldn’t go green and be proactively helping create positive change!”
About CR8Change
CR8Change is a green energy wind powered hosting company that does not pollute or contribute to global warming to power its web servers. CR8Change is an Internet Hosting company offering first rate technology without gouging customers with unnecessary fees. Cr8Change donates upwards of 14% of revenues to planting a new tree every month on behalf of every active web hosting account. For additional information please visit: http://www.cr8change.org
Contact Information:
James Arthur Smith, Founder and Executive Director
Phone: 858.926.5527
Email: info@cr8change.org
Web: http://www.cr8change.org
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The costs of a too-warm data center
The tradition is to keep data centers at 68 degrees (Fahrenheit). Supposedly it keeps the machines in good working order because heat can damage the circuits. Another supposed truth is that allowing the temperature to vary through the day (the natural world goes through a normal heating and cooling cycle) also damages equipment. A large part of the cost in running a data center goes into running the air conditioners that keep everything cool.
ASHRAE recently published a revised recommended environmental range for data center temperature and humidity levels. They claim temperature can reliably vary between 27C (80F) to 18C (64F). This means data center operators can readily go light on the air conditioning, reducing their energy use, and reducing the environmental impact from data center operations.
A recent study: ENERGY-EFFICIENCY THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT AND FACILITIES CONTROLS goes into whether this is truly required, or not.
ASHRAE recently published a revised recommended environmental range for data center temperature and humidity levels. They claim temperature can reliably vary between 27C (80F) to 18C (64F). This means data center operators can readily go light on the air conditioning, reducing their energy use, and reducing the environmental impact from data center operations.
Sources:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
How green are Google's services like gmail?
Several articles have gone around this year trying to guesstimate the cost of a web search using Google. Of course the question should be focusing on the cost of running the Internet, the cost of each web site, etc. In this case 'the cost' must be including not just the money to pay for machines and bandwidth and data centers but the environmental cost. The carbon footprint as well as the impact of mining the metals and other stuff that go into building the machines. It costs a lot of resources to build the Internet, and those resource costs can and are contributing to the environmental problems.
A recent blog (Gmail Actually Stands for Green(er) Mail) tries and largely fails to adequately make the case that gmail is greener than other forms of email. They cite a study that over half of some random set of people reading some specific random blog prefer to manage their email via an online service (like gmail) rather than on their own machine. It's hardly a good measure of a trustworthy survey result that it is based on the readership of a single blog. That is, the survey result should not be taken as a comprehensive indication of any kind of truth. Do a majority of all Internet users prefer an online email service?
In any case the 'green web' observation here is that using a web application like gmail uses more resources to read email than would an IMAP based email client.
In a way it doesn't matter how good Google is at greening their data center resource impact. Their very act of pushing us towards cloud services causes a greater increase in network traffic and infrastructure requirements.
If nothing else Google is having to buy more servers to host the gmail infrastructure. Those servers would not exist if Google weren't running gmail. On the other hand the servers at various internet service providers would be handling that email traffic, instead, and who knows how good a job they'd do in greening their infrastructure.
This revolves around the difference between Google hosting gmail and an internet service provider hosting an IMAP service. It requires more internet traffic to host the gmail service, hence the internet backbone has to have larger capacity to handle the gmail service.
On the other hand if Google is greener enough than the internet service providers, the actual impact will be less.
Maybe. It's rather fuzzy isn't it?
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