Green Hosting

Our Green Hosting

Green Hosting - The A2 Way

 It's so essential to help protect our environment on not just a local level, but on a global one as well. Protecting the environment for our future generations; that in a nutshell explains the goal of A2 Hosting's Green Initiatives!

 

Green Hosting Partnership with Carbonfund.org

One of our first green initiatives was our partnership with Carbonfund.org in 2007. With their help, every year we offset some of our servers’ CO2 emissions and reduce our carbon footprint. We picked Carbonfund.org because they are a leading organization in the fight against global climate change. Their work centers on reforestation and promoting energy efficiency. A2 Hosting's partnership with Carbonfund.org helps aid us in our green hosting mission and helps Carbonfund.org continue their development of clean, renewable sources of energy and the reduction of CO2 emissions on a global scale.

Our Green Hosting Practices

• Recycling Older Servers – Instead of tossing our older equipment into a landfill, we re-use it! Our retired hardware is used as internal servers, dedicated servers for clients with lower resource requirements, or is resold to the public after being wiped of it's information, of course.
• Solid State Disk Drives (SSD) and NVMe - SSDs and NVMe use less energy than traditional HDDs. A2 Hosting was one of the first providers to offer SSD Hosting! We’re proud to be one of the leaders in offering more energy efficient options for our customers.

Our Michigan Data Center

• Air-Side Economizing - We allow outside air to cool our data center saving electricity.
• Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Design - Our servers and network hardware are installed so heat is always directed into our hot aisles. This allows them to stay warmer and our cool aisles to stay colder with less air temperature control.
• Containment Enclosures - In relation to the bullet above, hot air is never mixed with the cold air inside our data center. All excess heat is exhausted to the outside of our building.
• Variable Speed Drives on all Fans and Motors - Our motors don't run at 100% capacity at all times. We use variable speed drives to reduce motor speeds so that they only operate at the speed necessary to perform each tasks. This drastically reduces electrical usage.
• Airflow Management - We've installed blanking panels in the data center cabinets to maximize the efficiency of our cooling system.

Our Green Initiatives

By working remotely, A2 Hosting has been able to save not only carbon, but other essential resources!

• Telecommuting – Our employees work remotely from their homes and prevent unnecessary CO2 emissions from daily commutes to an office. In the last year we’ve saved about 705 tons of CO2 by skipping the daily commute. That’s equivalent to three times the weight of the Statue of Liberty.
• Limiting Water Usage – We've also saved over 1,305,000 gallons of water. That’s enough to fill the Cathedral of Brasilia nearly eight times.
• Saving Electricity – Plus, by not powering a large office building, we've significantly cut down on our electricity consumption. We've saved over 960,000 kWh in the last year. That’s enough energy to power an electric car to drive 376,470 laps of Le Mans in France.
• Reducing Natural Gas Usage – We reduced our natural gas usage and saved over 1,152,000 cubic square feet of natural gas. That’s enough to fill one of the largest malls in the World, the CentralWorld Mall in Thailand.
• Online Communications – Finally, our company communicates solely through digital means. By skipping the printer we've saved over one million sheets of paper this year. That’s equivalent to a stack of paper about as tall as the Big Ben.
• Planting Trees – We've been known to run special green promotions. This year we’re partnering with Carbonfund.org to plant two trees for every package sold during Earth Week!