Feb, 2010 : LeaseWeb Launches Ultra Green Dedicated Servers

📅 February 11, 2010 - The company implements its dedicated server environment in collaboration with Dell, Microsoft and data center EvoSwitch.

LeaseWeb, a hosting provider, today announced that it has tested and implemented an energy-efficient dedicated server environment in collaboration with Dell, Microsoft and data center EvoSwitch. The company says that the dedicated server environment is currently in the beta stage. Its clients can already try these Ultra Green Dedicated Servers at a discount, adds the company.

The company further states that its R&D team has installed the energy-efficient dedicated server environment in a private suite of the green data center EvoSwitch. The implementation was carried out in collaboration with EvoSwitch engineers. One key basic ingredient for the innovative server setup is a cooling solution that uses Free Cooling (cooling with outside air) and Aisle Containment (separating hot and cold air).

"The dedicated server setup, according to our calculations, could have a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.1, which is considerably less than the current PUE of 1.5 within the overall data center environment of EvoSwitch," says Thorsten Einig, Product Manager at business hosting provider LeaseWeb and member of the R&D team. "A PUE of 1.1 means that the server setup is 90% more energy-efficient in its operation than a conventional server setup with 'standard' cooling."

"While these ingredients for cooling at such are nothing new, the design of the Total solution is completely different from what is common in the market," says Einig. "It is not a cooling solution with a traditional design, and it is completely different from the current cooling setup at EvoSwitch or other data centers. Airflows travel differently from what we are used to, and cooling equipment and control systems are specifically coordinated. We have also chosen extremely energy-efficient server equipment that has been specifically programmed and tuned to the cooling system."

The result is a server environment that allows the compressor to remain fully switched off throughout the year. Einig: "Free Cooling, or cooling with outside air, normally cannot be used throughout the year because temperatures in the Netherlands sometimes are too high. The current cooling setup, the decision to use specific server equipment and the specific coordination between individual systems entirely eliminates the need to use the compressor."

The new server environment has undergone extensive testing over the past six months. "And the results were amazingly good," says Einig. "Due to our presence at EvoSwitch, we fortunately already have many servers that are quite energy-efficient in their operation, but this separate environment with its own cooling design allows us to achieve significantly higher energy savings. In the coming period, we will need to further increase the number of clients in this environment in order to achieve the pre-calculated PUE of 1.1. It is known that the PUE drops as the server volume increases."

Einig: "While the solution runs stably within the stable preconditions of data center EvoSwitch, we have now entered a stage in which we want to increase the number of clients in that environment in order to further optimize the energy benefits. It is common knowledge that the benefits increase as the number of users increases. We now need to take that step. We have therefore decided to temporarily offer the servers in this specific environment at reduced prices. This means that clients entering during the beta stage will receive a discount."

Its R&D team continuously works to further improve the efficiency of products and work processes. "Innovation is necessary in order to guarantee our continued ability to offer products with a competitive price/quality ratio," says Einig. "To deliver high-quality hosting at competitive prices, our products and processes must be organized in the best possible manner. With energy costs being an increasingly major factor in hosting, we are forced to take action. Considering the size of our server park, including more than 22,000 servers in our hosting network, a slight reduction in energy use would allow us to obtain significant purchasing benefits."