How Green is OneIS?

by Ben Summers

18 April 2008

Some estimates suggest that 2% of global CO2 emissions come from the information technology industry. In the UK, running servers uses 1.5% of the country’s total energy consumption. And making computers and then disposing of them has a huge environmental impact.

It’s hard to argue that computing can ever be a “green” activity, but stopping all potentially damaging activities is unrealistic as most people would be reluctant to abandon the modern world. If we accept that the internet and computers are here to stay, we have to work to minimise their impact on the environment.

The Internet changes everything

Traditionally, if your business used an information system or database, you’d have a server in your office and you could only access the system from that office. Now you don’t need it; in the last few years Internet access has become sufficiently fast and reliable that you can depend on it. Where your server is physically located doesn’t matter, and you can access it anywhere you have an Internet connection.

This has led to the emergence of hosted applications, where the provider runs the servers for you and shares their resources amongst their clients. You can now get just about any kind of software as a hosted service.

More computer power for less energy

These days, computers are really fast. The traditional single-user servers running in an office might have been working flat out, but if a modern server is running just one system, it’s going to be idle for 95% or more of the time. Additionally, if you wanted to be sure that it’s always available, you’d also need a backup server which is 100% idle, just waiting in case you need it.

This is a huge waste of energy and equipment. While servers are idle, they’re still using power. If your office server is running at 5% of it’s capacity, it could be running 19 other systems for the same power consumption, and save 19 servers from being manufactured.

Not only can hosted systems utilize servers more effectively, but economy of scale makes them even more efficient. Providers can buy bigger and better servers, which are more efficient and more reliable.

Sharing servers is good for the environment. It means less power is used, less CO2 is emitted, and less pollution from their manufacture.

Reuse and recycle

Once a server has been in use for a few years, the advance of technology makes it obsolete. It can also simply wear out, as the moving components like hard discs and cooling fans reach the end of their life. But what do you do with the server when it’s no longer required?

Under the European WEEE directive, the manufacturer has to take back unwanted equipment for “reuse and recycling”. In practice there is little chance of reuse for a server which is a few years old, so recycling with minimal waste is the best we can hope for.

Charities like Computer Aid refurbish unwanted computer equipment and distribute it to developing countries, but they have less use for servers. Desktop computers are far more practical than a server which requires specialist cabinets and air conditioning.

The lack of options for reuse makes it all the more important that we cut the number of servers to the absolute minimum.

Getting even greener

We could be even greener, but we need help from the computer manufacturers and some minor advances in software.

Firstly, efforts are being made to cut down on the toxic chemicals used in manufacturing computers. Recently, Greenpeace ran a high profile campaign which highlighted some of the noxious substances used to make computers. We need to put pressure on the manufacturers to reduce these as much as possible.

Secondly, we need more information about the environmental costs. For example, over the lifetime of a server, it will use a considerable amount of energy which will probably cost more than the price of the equipment. Newer models will be able to do many times the work for the same power consumption. But when should a server be retired and replaced with a new one? We can calculate the monetary costs, but the environmental cost is less clear because we don’t have the data.

Finally, there are other questions which balance environmental concerns against other practical considerations. For example, hard discs are notoriously hard to recycle or reuse because the data which was held on them must be kept confidential. If a provider of a hosted application is to take their client’s confidentiality seriously, they can’t just send the discs back for recycling. Instead, they must be carefully wiped and then physically destroyed. This problem will be solved with disc encryption technology, but it’s not yet ready for use on a large scale. We’ll be monitoring this carefully.

Hosted services for small companies

The only sure way to make computing as green as it can be is to use modern, low power servers, and run them as near capacity as possible for as long as possible. For smaller organisations, hosted services are the only way of achieving this.

OneIS specialises in providing hosted information management services to small companies. Hosted systems are perfect for them because they don’t have IT staff and don’t need the full resources of a dedicated server. So, not only do they get world class infrastructure at affordable prices, but they’re making a contribution to an improved environment for us all.