Green Hosting

[FrankSpencer]

Green hosting seems to be a popular and growing option lately. Do you think that it actually has an impact, and does J199 offer a greener option?

[abender]

This is new to me, well almost everything in web hosting is new to me anyway.

How does green hosting work? Is this good for people who are just starting in having websites like me?

[trying hard]

This colored type of hosting is new to me too? Does this kind of hosting involve environmental issues? Is it something organic? What is it exactly?

[Webguy]

What is green hosting?  I've never heard of this before and I wonder how this type of hosting will affect the environment.  What makes it green?

[dave]

We just completed migrating all of our server to a Virtualized platform. This is a tremendous boost in efficiency and it's Green. This migration took roughly 6 months and was completed 3 weeks ago.

Virtual servers let us maximize resource utilization across our hardware. In the past we bought powerful servers that could handle the load spikes when there was heavy traffic on a machine. Now that we are virtual we use even more powerful machines with many virtual instances on them so that spikes can be swallowed up since they rarely occur on more than 1 server at the same time. This allows us to use more resources all of the time because we dont have machines sitting idle wating for a load spike.

[FrankSpencer]

Ah interesting. You see, with typical 'green' hosting the companies simply buy carbon credits and still continue the normal practises. But J199 are optimising performance and reducing usage instead-this seems to me more genuine-less of a cop out.

[abender]

How does virtualization actually work. This is a big word for me so pardon me for asking. I can understand a bit when you say powerful servers but how you make the powerful servers become even more powerful by virtualization?

[greeny]

Ah interesting. You see, with typical 'green' hosting the companies simply buy carbon credits and still continue the normal practises. But J199 are optimising performance and reducing usage instead-this seems to me more genuine-less of a cop out.

This is a smart and cost efficient way of greening a web host. I thought before that a green hosting company uses solar panels to power the servers. Does it?

[FrankSpencer]

I've not seen any that do that. Solar power is horribly expensive, at least at the outset because the equipment is so costly. So I don't think that they would succeed all that well at being competitive.

[dave]

Green means more than just alternative energy sources these days.

For us It means optimizing systems in order to reduce our energy consumption. This is both ecologically and financially responsible.

[greeny]

I've not seen any that do that. Solar power is horribly expensive, at least at the outset because the equipment is so costly. So I don't think that they would succeed all that well at being competitive.

Yes the biggest drawback of solar power is its expensive equipment, which is either not affordable or affordable but not cost efficient for the company using it. But it is a one-time investment, isn't it? Do you think it also requires high maintenance cost?

[dave]

The problem with solar power is that it's unreliable and a huge capital investment.

If it was feasible we would see huge datacenters like Google capitalizing on it even with the high upfront cost.

[greeny]

Yes, I can understand how it is not reliable. It has something to do with the sunlight availability. What about the technology? Do you think it will be feasible if used in the tropical zone where the sunlight is available throughout the year?

[dave]

I think it has potential on a large scale where a a power company might supplement their traditional sources with solar power but at this point it is not financially viable. I expect that we will see new technology in the coming years that allows energy facilities to start looking at it as a cost saving method rather than a buzz word and that is when we will see it go mainstream.

[FrankSpencer]

I think that it is more a resource that can be called upon to feed into the grid on gloriously sunny days, and then falling back upon drawing from the grid on other days. Like other renewable energy sources, it could be an important way of reducing our overall annual needs, but not day to day.