Green Hosting Initiatives
Many of Rochen’s clients have become more concerned with environmental and green issues in recent years and we want to do what we can to help address these without compromising the quality of service Rochen has become renowned for throughout the industry. At the same time we wanted to do this in a genuine and honest way as there are also many critics surrounding these types of issues. Our green initiatives consist of both carbon offsetting as well as improvements in technology and business processes. This is a new area for Rochen and one we are continuing to work at and plan to invest in heavily over the coming years.
Carbon Offsetting
Rochen has 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. On behalf of Rochen Green Mountain 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. Rochen’s funding will also provide support for reforestation projects through Green Mountain’s relationship with the Pacific Forest Trust. Our emissions levels will be reviewed annually and the amount of carbon credits required to offset them adjusted accordingly.
Download Green Mountain Energy Certificate (Scan of Original)
Reduced Energy Consumption
While offsetting our emissions through carbon credits is very important it is our long-term game plan to actually reduce Rochen’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 our energy consumption makes both business and environmental sense for Rochen.
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. Rochen 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, our 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 Rochen 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. Rochen 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.
Green Hosting Seal
If you already host with Rochen you may place the Green Hosting Seal on your website to show your site visitors that you take environmental issues seriously and have taken steps to offset any emissions generated from the operation of your website. Rochen also have an unbranded seal available for reseller web hosting customers to use upon request.
Use the following code to display the seal on your website. Alternatively save one of the seal images for upload to your own hosting account:
< a href="http://www.rochenhost.com/about/green" title="Green Hosting" > < img src="http://www.rochenhost.com/ext/green_hosting[96x96].png" alt"Green Hosting" / > </a>
< a href="http://www.rochenhost.com/about/green" title="Green Hosting" > < img src="http://www.rochenhost.com/ext/green_hosting[128x128].png" alt"Green Hosting" / > </a>