Green Hosting Initiative

HILLCOM is part of a Green Hosting Initiative program.

Green Hosting Initiatives

HILLCOM is concerned with environmental and green issues and are addressing these circumstances without compromising the quality of service that we have available. At the same time, these issues need to be addressed in a genuine and honest way as there are also many critics surrounding these types of problems. Our green initiatives consist of both carbon offsetting as well as improvements in technology and business processes. If at the very least, HILLCOM is happy to participate in making the earth a little cleaner.
 

Carbon Offsetting

HILLCOM’s Server Associates have partnered with Green Mountain Energy, the leading provider of cleaner energy and carbon offsetting solutions, to purchase 25 metric tons of carbon credits to offset the emissions of our hosting operations. They will invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power as well as biomass facilities – many of which have been setup as a result of their initiatives. Our Server Associates’ funding will also provide support for reforestation projects through Green Mountain’s relationship with the Pacific Forest Trust. The emissions levels will be reviewed annually and the amount of carbon credits required to offset them adjusted accordingly.
 

Reduced Energy Consumption

While offsetting the emissions through carbon credits is very important, it is our long-term game plan to actually reduce HILLCOM’s emissions on a per client basis across our operations. This means that the carbon emissions generated by delivering service to a client today are less than they were a year ago and going into the future we hope to reduce them further.

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 AMD’s Opteron High Efficiency (HE) line of CPUs. While delivering the same computing power an Opteron HE CPU uses on average 27 watts less power than a standard Opteron. 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 30 watts per server. This adds up to a lot of savings across an entire data center. With the rising cost of electricity, reducing the energy consumption makes both business and environmental sense for HILLCOM.
 

Data Center Cooling Improvements

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. HILLCOM’s Server Associates have been working to reduce the amount of power consumed in the cooling operations in several different ways.

Firstly, they installed filler panels in all of the 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, our Server Associates’ exclusive server hardware vendor, Supermicro, design 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 perforated tiles throughout the facility and efficient hot / cold isle cabinet layouts on the data center floor.
 

Recycling and Reducing Wastefulness

Where possible all of the packaging HILLCOM’s Server Associates receives with new servers, switches and other items in is fully recycled. Vendors like Supermicro are also working to reduce the amount of packaging their servers require as well. Hill Communications Canada 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.
 

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Following the launch of our Server Associates green hosting initiatives in November 2008, they were contacted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre. The UNEP were impressed with the practical and open steps that our Server Associates had taken to be more environmentally friendly by offsetting carbon emissions, increasing the efficiency of their hosting operations and committing themselves to continual improvement. The UNEP now hosts their Conservation Commons website with our Server Associates. You can visit the Conservation Commons site and learn more about their goals at: www.conservationcommons.net.