We know that the internet usage is increasing day by day. We cannot even imagine a day without using internet. Statistics shows that the internet usage is growing from 400 to 1000% a year worldwide. Web hosting providers consume a large amount of energy to run servers and other services such as cooling controls. If energy consumption is increasing in this rate, then by 2020, this industry will be more polluting than airline industry. 0.2% of world’s carbon dioxide is emitted by the data centers alone.

Green hosting is an eco-friendly web hosting service that reduces the energy consumption of the system.

How to implement green hosting:

1. Purchasing renewable energy credits

There are many firms that produce renewable energy. Usage of renewable energy reduces the emission of green house gases. 72,000 square feet of solar panel laid on top of a data center can produce upto 924,013 kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean electricity annually, which is equivalent to offsetting 702 tons of green house gas emissions .

2. Reducing energy consumption

Green web hosting firms need to take several measures to reduce their energy consumption. It includes:

* Use of efficient severs

Based on CERN’s (world’s largest physics laboratory) research, an organisation can reduce total power consumption to almost five times by using the latest Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers (2.46 mega watt) rather than old single- core Intel Xeon processor-based servers (11.81 mega watt). This clearly shows the lower energy consumption by efficient servers. The number of servers used can also be reduced to 1/8 of the number of servers being used now.

* Choose the best TDP

TDP(Thermal Design Power), refers to the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate. Processors running with various clock frequencies are available now. The higher the frequency, the higher will be the processor’s TDP, resulting in higher performance but also higher energy consumption. If the organisation is more concerned with performance per watt than with absolute performance per server, processors with lower TDP sometimes deliver better overall value and are to be selected accordingly.

Summary

The servers which are “green” are small in size but offer excellent bandwidth and memory. They also have excellent units for supplying cooling mechanism. This is possible because they use solar and wind power for these purposes which are unlimited and cost less compared to other resources. Since they use these alternative ways of energy, they emit less carbon dioxide into the air. The traditional servers in comparison emit too much of carbon dioxide in to the air and are also too costly to maintain.

The above is a very rough outline on green hosting , if you have any questions, we would be happy to talk to you!

About the Author :

Greeshma S Giri works as a Jr.Software Engineer in Bobcares. She joined Bobcares in May 2012. She loves reading books and listening to music in her free time.

There may be instances in which your server goes down and you may need a technician to go to DataCenter and inspect the server. This can cost you both time and money. The fact is you can easily perform this task within minutes using any remote management devices. The primary aim of this article is to focus on Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) which is one of the most widely used remote management device.

IPMI provides the ability to remotely power on, power off, and reboot the server. It also provides a Serial Console and/or Keyboard-Video-Mouse as if you were sitting in front of the physical computer. IPMI uses a secondary network which is completely independent of the main network connection used by the regular users. If you are facing issues in the primary network, you will still be able to access the server via IPMI. It works independently of the operating system and can therefore be used before the Operating System boots up. You can even view the server screen while it is booting up using the remote console in IPMI. The device is password protected and user can’t access the server even though he has managed to access the IPMI’s network. Also, the traffic can be encrypted at hardware level using SSL. This adds to the security of the device. Since, IPMI devices operates on a separate network, an IP address has to be assigned to it.

The common tasks that you can remotely perform using IPMI:

* Remote Console : IPMI provides a remote console which is independent of the Operating System. It will work even if the server is down.

* Hard Reboots : IPMI can be used for hard reboot of the server and power cycling it. A power cycle will cut down the power to the server and then power it up.

* Altering BIOS settings : Since IPMI is independent of the Operating System, we can view the server screen while it is booting up, and alter the BIOS settings similarly to physically sitting in front of the system.

* Reseting the server password

* Monitoring the server via sensors : The sensors installed along with IPMI will provide vital information like CPU temperature, fan speed, power fluctuations etc. An event log is also available along with IPMI which will log events like power failures and BIOS generated events.

* Operating system installation

* Create sub accounts with limited privileges for the customers to perform basic tasks like server reboot.

An alternative technology for IPMI is KVM over IP switches (also known as IP KVM switches). But it is a bit more costly and doesn’t provide an option to mount a virtual drive. Intel Active Management Technology also facilitates remote management. But, it can be installed only with specific processors and the feature set is limited.

IPMI has its own variants that are customized by different vendors. The most common ones are Dell IDRAC and HP Integrated Lights-Out (ILO). Both provide almost same features and the performance. The cost varies according to the specifications of the IPMI card.

Most of the new servers have in built IPMI cards. Installing IPMI cards in a server is a fairly straight forward procedure. You will have to power down the server and plug in the IPMI card. Then boot the server from the installation CD and make the changes to BIOS as mentioned by the provider. An IP address is assigned to the IPMI device as it uses a different network. Since IPMI is independent of the Operating System, no specific software is required to be running in the server unless you wish for a graceful reboot option.

The above is a very rough outline of the IPMI service we provide, and if you have any questions, we would be happy to talk to you!

About the Author :

Dipin D works as a Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in September 2010. He loves reading books and listening to music in his free time.

Blog edited by :

Vivek Kumar works as a Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in April 2011. He loves to watch movies in his free time.

Whether you believe what Julian Assange is doing is right or wrong, you’ll still have to admit that the amount of traffic WikiLeaks is generating is the dream of any web site owner and the dread of every web host. It is estimated to be receiving over 3,000 visitors per second. Not to mention the DDoS attacks and hack attempts. So how do they actually do it? Lets take a look at how WikiLeaks have been working hard to keep their site online.

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you part of a Cloud? Have you started using Cloud based services? Do you use Cloud storage? You may answer “No” to these questions, but the simple truth is that, you may already be using Cloud services without even knowing it! Have an email account provided by a 3rd party like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo!? Then you’ve already started using Cloud Storage. Yup, your mails are being stored on the “Cloud” of one of these service providers. Read on to find out more about Cloud Storage.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days after Microsoft announced their Azure Platform Appliance, a new Cloud OS entered the scene - OpenStack. While most Cloud OSes out there are proprietary, OpenStack is an open source cloud OS(Its being provided under the Apache 2.0 license) that is being jointly developed by RackSpace and NASA.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows Azure was in the news again when Microsoft announced the “Windows Azure Platform Appliance” at their Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) on July 12th. It consists of pre-configured containers that hold between a hundred and a thousand servers running the Windows Azure platform. These containers will initially be housed at Dell’s, HP’s and Fujitsu’s datacenters. Microsoft is hoping that large enterprise customers, like eBay, will later host these containers at their own datacenters on site. But what is Windows Azure? and does it have anything to do with Webhosting?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wieso sollte ich ISPmanager nehmen? Am ende ist es doch nur eine Frage der Anforderungen und wieviel man dafür ausgeben möchte. Der ISPmanagerbasiert auf einem Web Interface in welchem man sehr einfache seinen Server einstellen kann. Es arbeitet Mit FreeBSD, Linux, Windows(nur die Light Version von ISPmanager), und zukünftig auf Solaris.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why should I chose ISPmanger instead of any another control panel? In the end, it is all a matter of your preference, on how much you want to spend for your requirement and what you get from it.

ISPmanager is a web based control panel where you can easily configure your Servers. It works on FreeBSD, Linux, Windows(only the lite version of ISPmanager) Servers, with up coming support for Solaris. It has all the required features for a control panel to manage a domain and a server.

Read the rest of this entry »

Talk about powerful processors and the names Opteron and Xeon jump to mind. These are the processors of choice of Datacenters around the world, with specifications that sound like they belong in a sci-fi movie. All that processing power comes at a cost though. Energy. The future may not belong to the most Powerful, but the most Energy-Efficient!

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve spoken about Going Green, and the little things we can do to save our future. So as a Webhost, what else can you do? Well, for one thing, when shopping for servers, go for something Green. How will you know if the server you are looking at is “Green”? and I’m not talking about the color!

Read the rest of this entry »