It is a little known fact in hosting that for every amp of power used to run a server in a data center it takes on average another amp of power to run the climate control systems that cool it. Techevolution has been working to reduce the amount of power consumed in our cooling operations in several different ways. Firstly, we have installed filler panels in all of our cabinet slots that are not actually filled by servers. This means all of the cold air is forced through the servers instead of passing through gaps above or below. It takes lot of energy to cool the air in a data center, especially in the summer months, so not passing all of the cool air through the servers is wasteful which is what the filler panels help to prevent. Secondly, one of our server hardware vendors, Supermicro, designs the best rackmount system chassis available in terms of air flow design. By deploying servers with the best possible air flow it actually allows us to raise the ambient air temperature of data center floor by around two degrees Fahrenheit without compromising service in any way at all. By raising the floor temperature slightly we can reduce the load on the climate control systems. Lastly, we also invest heavily in other technologies to improve airflow and cooling like raised flooring with tiles throughout the facility and efficient hot / cold isle cabinet layouts on the data center floor.
While overall emissions may rise as our business grows, our long-term game plan is to actually reduce Techevolution’s emissions on a per client basis across our operations. Many steps have already been taken on the technology front to achieve this such as investing in more expensive but far more power efficient computer processors, like Intel’s latest Nehalem line of CPUs. Likewise, where in the past we would install sixteen 1GB RAM sticks in a server we will now install four 4GB RAM sticks instead, giving the same computing power but reducing power usage by around 40 watts per server. This adds up to a lot of savings across an entire data center. With the rising cost of electricity, reducing our energy consumption makes both business and environmental sense for us.
Where possible all of the packaging Techevolution receives with new servers, switches and other items in is fully recycled. We only hire vendors that are also working to reduce the amount of packaging their servers require as well. Techevolution works to reduce wastefulness by keeping printing to a minimum and requesting all invoices electronically from our vendors as well as issuing invoices electronically to our own clients as well.
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