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Over the course of the last few years DH WEB, Inc. has experienced phenomenal
growth in both it's web development and custom hosting services. Along with this
growth DH WEB has seen its energy usage double in both cost and usage. We started down the Green Road
by instituting the most typical energy conservation methods such as, switching to energy efficient
bulbs, powering off equipment, etc. This helped, but it wasn't enough to substantially
lower our consumption. We found that the largest energy usage was being generated
from the web servers and cooling costs, so we decided to do something about it.
The hosting industry, as whole, has been very slow in developing or adopting energy efficient
or "Green" hardware. So we went ahead and did our own research and found that substantial results
can be achieved by switching to more energy efficient CPUs, hard drives and power
supplies. All these items are currently on the market and readily available, but have not traditionally been used
in a server or hosting environment. So we decided to give some energy conscious CPUs and hard disks a try in a web server, and to-date have received great results and performance levels after having made the switch.
DH WEB is keenly aware that today the cost of the energy to power
a web server over time is far greater than the cost of the server
hardware itself. We have found that
the Intel Atom server is "faster than a Pentium 4" and uses
75% less power. In addition, due to the low
heat the Atom CPU generates, overall cooling costs are lower
as well.
Unlike a home computer or workstation
that can hibernate, go into power down mode, or simply be turned
off when not being used, a web server has to be fully powered
and available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That results in
a large use of electricity and also generates quite a bit of
heat.
DH WEB recently deployed a number of Dual Core Atom
Intel CPU Linux based web servers. Atom processors, originally designed for mobile devices, draw less
electricity to run and cool them -- as little as one-twentieth
of the energy required by conventional server processors. To further reduce energy usage in it's servers,
DH WEB has begun using highly efficient, low heat, "Green" hard drives with great success and without sacrificing any performance.
Along with the Atom Core CPU servers, we have also found great success in repurposing no longer produced Cobalt RaQ web servers.
The RaQ's were originally manufactured to be very low power consuming (50 watt) web servers.
Because the power consumption of a RaQ is only 50 watts, the amount of heat they produce is also very minimal.
For comparison today's servers average upwards of 450 watts of power usage and generate a tremendous amount of heat.
Another benefit of repurposing the RaQ's for specific single-purpose tasks
such as DNS, FTP, Firewalls and File servers is that we help out the environment by saving the landfills being filled up with yesterday's technology.
One of the repurposed RAQ servers we currently have in use has been running for over 10 years and is still using the original hard disk.
Wikipedia page on the Cobalt RaQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_RaQ
DH WEB client, CBS 58 (www.cbs58.com),
which receives over 10,000 unique visitors per day and currently exceeding
over 10 million total hits per month, was recently migrated over
to three separate Atom Intel CPU web servers. One for the website
structure, one for the MySQL database, and one
to deliver the video content. The video above, watering a green server, is being delivered
by an ATOM CPU based web server.
At this point we are well on the road to becoming a Green Hosting and Web Development facility.
We are also currently researching the concept of generating some of our own power requirements through the
use of small wind power technology devices.
By reducing our overall hosting and power consumption costs we are able to pass
the savings on to our clients, while also being environmentally responsible.
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