Why Do We Require the Data Centers to Be Green?

The answer is simple- to save the environment. 

As the world started becoming digital during the turn of the century, the requirement of data storage and application processing has led to complex computing hardware architectures. However, these hardware architectures that consist of high-capacity servers cause more harm to the environment than was ever anticipated. 

These servers are hosted in data centers that are expected to provide the servers with optimum working conditions. To do so, the data centers consume a significant part of the global electric power. This electric power causes carbon emissions, which lead to global warming and the degradation of the environment.    

The experts from all around the globe have constantly looking for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of the data centers by reducing power consumption through sustainable sources of energy. 

Moreover, adopting a green data center has its financial perks as well. According to Supermicro’s Annual Green Data Center Report, the data centers can save up to a whopping 38 mill annually in energy costs and 350 tons of e-waste.  

Let us dig into some of the challenges posed by the traditional data centers and how can going green help in sustaining the environment while optimizing efficiency.

Carbon Footprint

According to Nature, the data centers are responsible for 0.3 percent of the overall carbon emissions. 

This is because the traditional data centers utilize the non-renewable sources of energy like electricity for running servers and the supporting infrastructure. They also use fuel for generators used as a power backup. These sources of energy usually increase the carbon footprint of the data center with the harmful emission of greenhouse gases like methane and CO2. 

Credit: NK Realtors

Green data centers try to resolve the global energy crisis by implementing solutions that utilize the abundant renewable sources of energy on our planet, like hydro, wind, and solar energy. The utilization of these sources for power generation decreases the dependence on fuel significantly, which is crucial to reduce the carbon footprint and sustain the environment. 

In 2019, Facebook announced that it used 75 percent of renewable sources of energy to power its data centers.

This is achieved through an eco-friendly data center architecture that takes advantage of the surrounding landscape. The data center location is selected by taking into consideration the availability of natural resources. Then infrastructure for solar farms, windmills, etc. are designed to take advantage of the resources.

Power Consumption

It is estimated that in 2018, the electricity consumption by data centers was about 1 percent of the entire world consumption (source: Network World). Although it is necessary to keep the data centers functional on a 24/7 basis, the level of power consumption needs to be optimized as there are limited resources.

One of the major solutions that the green data centers are deploying to reduce power consumption is virtualization. A virtualized server environment refers to optimizing the server resources through the creation of Virtual Machines (VMs). 

A VM can be thought of as a virtual server with its own resources and operating system. Hence, one physical server can be divided into multiple VMs that can be utilized by various users at once. Therefore, where the entire servers were used to cater to one process earlier, with virtualization, it can be used to accommodate various processes.   

Another solution that helps in reducing power consumption is cloud technology. The cloud helps in the overallocation of resources due to its highly flexible nature. It implies that the resources that are not in use by a user can be distributed to other users, or turned off completely, so they do not use any power. Hence, the users can scale their resources, without the data center partners having to add more servers.

In addition to these technologies, the use of renewable sources like wind, solar, and hydro in green data centers does reduce power consumption significantly.

Heat

If you have ever been to a server room, you would know how major a problem this is for the data centers and the environment. The servers are high-capacity hardware that process loads to data per second, causing them to heat up.

The data centers traditionally need to deploy a well-distributed HVAC (Heat, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system to keep these servers in the optimum state. However, still, sometimes, the heat from the servers creates hotspots around the data centers, causing inconvenience for the workers inside. The air-conditioning adds to the environmental issues as they consume significant electric power and release the heat to the outside surroundings. 

The green data centers use advanced methods to utilize the natural cooling sources like water and air to maintain the optimum temperature for the servers. The green data centers primarily use either air-based or liquid-based cooling systems. 

In an air-based cooling system, natural air from outside is filtered and circulated uniformly around the data center. Whereas, in liquid-based cooling, the water from surrounding resources like rivers is used to cool the data center. The heated water turns into steam, which is then used for power generation.

Hence, the energy sources are recycled to provide air-conditioning to the data centers, which minimized the harmful environmental effects.

Economic Benefits

Credit: YaleNews

Along with the numerous environmental benefits that the green data center guarantees, it also enables the data centers to optimize their costs. Although building a new-gen design for a green data center would require initial investments, it would reap significant benefits in the long-run.

Since the data center majorly utilizes renewable sources of energy (which cost nothing), the cost of electricity and fuel required to run the data centers in reduced significantly. Moreover, the green data center implement procedures to recycle e-waste (like hardware equipment) from the data centers, which provided them with a new source of revenue.

The data centers are slowly but surely realizing the importance of going green to sustain the environment and optimize their budget. There is still time that we start thinking about the environment and adopt green practices, not only in the data centers but also in our daily routine.

Main Photo Credit: IEEE Spectrum

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Dedicated Server Hosting

Let us take the analogy of a house with four bedrooms. You are the only person living in the house and can do whatever you want with it. All the amenities of the house are reserved for you. This scenario is the same as availing a dedicated server.
A dedicated server is referred to a physical server, the resources of which are utilized by a single tenant. Let us assume that you avail a dedicated server with the hosting provider for your website.
The resources of the server such as RAM, storage, graphics card, processor, etc. is used only for your website. You can customize the server as per your requirement and choose the operating system or the software you want to install in it.
There are various advantages of availing dedicated server hosting. Firstly, as you are the only tenant and the resources are dedicated solely for your purpose, no other process can hamper your productivity.
Imagine a physical server with two websites A & B hosted on it. As website A draws data traffic at peak hours, it utilizes more processing as well as storage resources. The overutilization of resources from website A can cause website B to crash to underperform as it is not able to get even the minimum amount of resources to function.
Secondly, there is a security concern. Although the hosting providers deploy all the critical security safeguards in the data center as well as their services to keep your data safe, it is always wise to take precautions yourself.
The dedicated server hosting enables you to host your application and data on the server without any interference from other tenants. Hence, any cyber attack on other application or website cannot hamper the performance of your application or integrity of your data.
However, dedicated server hosting can prove to be more expensive than other types of hosting because of the obvious benefits. Hence, while choosing dedicated server hosting, you should evaluate your process and make sure if you need dedicated resources and enhanced security for your process.

Shared Server Hosting

Again, consider a house with four bedrooms and four tenants. The four bedrooms are shared by the four people, but one person can use any number of bedrooms as per his requirement leaving the other three with no place to live.
Shared hosting, as the name suggests, is the hosting of multiple tenants on a single server. The resources of the server are shared among the tenants. However, there is no restriction on the type of application or data you can host on a shared server. A shared server can host a website, application, and software on the same server.
Shared hosting is preferred for small-scale applications as they cannot fully utilize the server resources. Imagine you have a server with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB storage with eight applications hosted on it. The resource will be distributed among these applications with no special preference given to anyone. It means that an application can utilize more than 2 GB of RAM if other applications are not using their resources. One application also tends to utilize more RAM when unexpected traffic is incident on it. This can hamper the performance of other applications.
Another aspect of shared hosting is that as the application develops, it is in need of more resources. The application then must be migrated to another server as the shared server cannot provide more resources. The migration of the application data is a tedious task in itself.
The application that does not experience high traffic and deals with huge amounts of data like some static websites can opt for shared hosting.

Virtual Private Server Hosting

Getting back to the house analogy, you have a house with four bedrooms and four people living in it. But, this time, each person gets one bedroom each. The person cannot enter the other bedrooms and cannot house anyone in them. Hence, each person gets an equal living space.
Virtual Private Server or VPS hosting is the same as shared server hosting apart from a significant difference. By the implementation of virtualization technology on the physical server, a single server is divided into multiple private servers.
We again consider a server with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB storage. Let us assume that eight applications are hosted on it. Contrary to shared server hosting, the physical server is divided into eight virtual servers with each allotted same resources, that is, 1 GB RAM and 64 GB of storage.
The main advantage of VPS hosting is that other applications cannot impact the performance of your application. Although they share the same server, each tenant gets a dedicated server to perform the desired functions. However, the resources are still limited, and the resource requirement can be met only by hardware replacement or decreasing the number of tenants.
The VPS hosting can be used by small and medium-sized applications with a low budget and security concerns as it is cheaper than dedicated server hosting and more secure than shared hosting.

Colocation Hosting

Colocation hosting is the hosting when the customer avails the data center facility of a provider to host his/her physical server. In this case, the hardware belongs to the customer. Only the infrastructure of the data center and the services of the hosting provider is availed by the customer.
Most users opt for colocation hosting as they possess the hardware but do not have the infrastructure to host them. The data centers, however, provide state-of-the-art infrastructure for the hardware. These include redundant cooling, power, and network equipment, multiple firewalls, among others.   
The services offered by the hosting provider may differ with each provider. Some of the features include management of servers, hardware replacement, cable installation, etc.
Depending on the hardware, you can opt for 1U, 2U, 4U, 10U, 21U, or even 42U rack space. The data centers in which your server is hosted can be classified into various tiers depending on the quality of the infrastructure.
You can opt for colocation hosting if you possess the hardware but need a hosting provider with advanced data center and services.

Cloud Hosting

Last but certainly not the least, the hosting providers offer cloud environment to host your applications. Cloud has announced itself on the hosting landscape, and it is here to stay.
So, what is a cloud?
Cloud computing refers to a cluster of servers working synchronously to perform complex functions. Like any other type of hosting, the cloud servers are situated in data centers. However, these servers are interconnected with each other.
With the help of virtualization, every Virtual Machine (VM) created on the physical servers act as an independent server. The VMs can be moved from one server to another. Hence, if one server crashes, your application and data are still secure. This makes your application completely hardware-independent.
Moreover, your application on the cloud can be scaled instantly. As the cloud comprises a group of servers, if your application needs extra resources, the resources can be provided easily.
Due to its flexible nature, the cloud providers charge you as per your resource usage. There are numerous cloud service providers available in the market. You must choose the cloud provider that offers a secure and flexible environment for your process.

To Sum it Up!

There are various methods of hosting available for you to host your application. You need to choose the hosting that is cost-efficient, secure, and by your application.
On the one hand, a dedicated server offers you with dedicated access to resources but is also expensive than other types of hosting. Whereas, on the other hand, shared hosting offers a cheap option, but you have to share your resources with others. VPS hosting is a combination of both, where you get dedicated resources, but on the shared server.
Colocation enables you to host your physical server in the data centers of the hosting provider. You get all the benefits of the data center infrastructure for your server.
Cloud hosting is another hosting option that offers you with a secure and flexible option to host your data.

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