At SingleHop, we have always been environmentally conscious, as we like to do our part to decrease the carbon footprint left by data centers worldwide. A new report was recently presented at the Green Enterprise Computing Symposium by McKinsey and Co. using data from the Uptime Institute. The data that this report presents is a bit unnerving, however there are fairly simple solutions to combat the rising emissions of Data Centers.

There are many concerns involved in reducing emissions from data centers worldwide, though there are solutions to be implemented. Currently, a comparison of CO₂ emissions as a percentage of total emissions is as follows:

Data Centers: .3%
Airlines: .6%
Shipyards: .8%
Steel Plants: 1%

Although these percentages seem small, there are, of course, many industries with high emissions, the focus on data centers is due to the fact that they are rapidly expanding and will soon eclipse the airline industry in terms of emissions. They are a vital component of a networked global economy, so much so that it is now expected that emissions from data centers will quadruple by the year 2020. It is projected that there will be, by the year 2010, 41-43 million servers in operation. Also, 90% percent of companies/public sector data centers will need to build more power and cooling in the next 30 months due to expansion. This may seem unbelievable, but the green house gases emitted from data centers already exceeds that of Argentina as a whole.

There are several suggestions now regarding how to combat a hugely and possibly damaging rise in emissions in data centers for the future. In the US, there is now discussion of implementing unified standards for data centers modeled after the CAFE standard for the automotive industry, in essence a miles per gallon for data centers. The EPA is also required to now submit a yearly report to Congress regarding this issue. The EU is also beginning to look into new strategies that target data center emissions by developing a code of conduct describing energy efficiency best practices.

However, as data centers become a global fact, absolute solutions become less clear. Although, in terms of principle alone, companies and governments should do all they can to reduce emissions, these solutions can, in the beginning, be costly. Redesigning and reconstructing a data center for greater efficiency isn’t a small task or a cheap one. Putting more emphasis on lowering the costs of newer, more energy efficient servers would make this technology more easily available not only to established companies, but to startups and smaller businesses. Also, a global initiative to strengthen environmental standards for the tech community would greatly help reducing emissions and fight the disparities between different countries and their various environmental policies. Whether this is done by governments themselves or through economic forums, like Davos, the impact could be significant.

There is a lot of confusion these days with all the new processor technology that has come out over the last few years. Intel has released a great amount of different technologies such as Hyper-Threading, the Core series, as well as VT technology. Now, I’m sure after reading these terminologies that Intel has coined you’re thinking “what does that mean for me?” Well I am so glad you asked!

As is universally acknowledged, fires in buildings are pretty awful things. But something truly awful, is a fire in a data center. I previously wrote a blog post about how America has the 4th most network integrated economy in the world. A fire in a data center can truly be catastrophic. The possible loss of data and equipment damage, plus the lives put in danger are truly frightening prospects.
Although, to move out of dark territory, there are amazing prevention methods to avoid this:

There are a few methods of waterless fire protection in data centers, as well as strategic structure preparation. The most common reasons for data center fires are:
- Accumulations of underfloor combustible materials, such as unused wiring insulation and connectors
- Paper storage and supplies within data center space
- Tape storage materials stored outside of the designated storage space
- Improper storage and maintenance of fuel for emergency generators
- Failure of personnel to adhere to stated guidelines
- Fuel system piping leaks
These are things that are easily remedied by not running wiring under the floor, but rather where it is visible and then basic vigilance in terms of data center maintenance and staffing. We are proud to say that at SingleHop, we absolutely demand all of these safety measures, as well has having a truly awesome (as in inducing gasping awe) generator system in the event of power disruption.

Also, there are state of the art and not quite so state of the art fire suppression systems. The older waterless fire suppression system was known as Halon. It was introduced in 1973 and was one of the first gaseous fire suppression agents. These systems are still around in some places, though not too much anymore considering it was banned in 1994, as it is an ozone depleting substance and requires a breathing apparatus (gas mask) when it is released in high concentrations.

We definitely don’t use Halon at SingleHop. We take pride in using a data center that is as up to date as possible and environmentally friendly. We use a gaseous fire suppressant known as FM-200 (Heptafluoropropane), which looks like this:

And:

This compound prevents this:

FM-200 is a great fire suppression agent used in more than 70 countries. FM-200 is insanely fast at suppressing fire, often in 10 seconds or less, and can stop ordinary combustible, electrical, and flammable liquid fires before they cause significant damage that make buildings look like this:

FM-200 is the fastest fire protection available, meaning less damage, lower repair costs, less disruption, and, most importantly, the protection of human life.

FM-200 can also be safely stored and used where people are present. It doesn’t require a gas mask like Halon. It’s stored in cylinders as a liquid and pressurized with nitrogen, meaning that it saves huge amounts of storage space.

To read about the consequences of data center fires and lack of adequate fire prevention mechanisms, check out these articles:

http://www.hostsearch.com/news/camer…_news_7073.asp
http://torrentfreak.com/prq-fire-tak…-sites-080216/
http://www.thewhir.com/features/alabanza-blackout.cfm

And the most extreme in lack of fire prevention, a two part series of articles regarding the before and after:
Before: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html
After: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5110244.stm?ls
http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content…A01%3A43%3A230

Hello All,
We have recently re-introduced our Pentium D 945 machines and because we have had a lot of questions about them, I wanted to go into some of the big differences between that Pentium D 945 and the Core2Duo E6320, which we have already been offering for a while. On the face of it, the P-D945 looks to be a faster processor, both include Dual-Core Technology, but the 945 clocks in at 3.4Ghz per core, while the Core2Duo clocks in at 1.86Ghz per core, so why is the Core2Duo more expensive?

Hello all,

I wanted to write a short post about one of our newer services. We recently added a hardware load balancer, specifically a Foundry Networks ServerIron 4G Series Switch, to our network. The idea behind adding this appliance is to make a hardware load balancing service available to our customers.

We have chosen the new Core 2 Duo bleeding edge processors for our new dedicated servers for a variety of reasons. One major reason for picking these processors is that they are faster than their predecessors, and will create a more enjoyable experience while using the server.

The other major reason for choosing the new processors is power consumption. They use significantly less power than the previous processors we were using. The previous generation of processors, the Pentium D series, used about 130 watts of power. The current generation of Core Duo Processors uses around 60 watts. This means there is about a 50% reduction in power being used by the new processor.