Environmental Responsibility

It is estimated that data centres contribute around 5% to the EU's total energy usage. In light of this, Storm Internet is committed to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint through a number of methods. We engage with our data centre suppliers on a regular basis to review their renewable energy policies and their attitude towards carbon reduction, whilst actively working with our hardware suppliers to source the latest and most energy efficient technologies.

Green Data Centre

Our data centres are certified to ISO14001 (Environmental Management) and themselves are committed to developing carbon neutral hosting facilities. They are looking to achieve this through a continued investment programme and by liaising with their own suppliers to identify where new efficiencies can be created. Some of the measures that have been employed as part of their strategies include:

• Liaising with power suppliers so that only energy provided from renewable sources is used; whilst this can carry a slight price premium over power sourced from fossil fuels, it can contribute greatly to carbon reduction efforts
• Our network engineers utilise industry best practices when setting up a rack and routing cables; although this may not seem relevant, a poorly configured rack layout can reduce airflow, in-turn reducing the capability for hardware to remain cool passively, therefore leading to increased energy consumption
• Cold aisle containment has reduced the operating temperature of the air handling units by 3 degrees; as a result an annual energy saving of around 300,000 KwH has been realised.

Energy Efficient Servers

We use the latest Dell PowerEdge servers which provide the ultimate in efficiency and reliability whilst reducing their need for power. Dell have made significant steps in creating more environmentally friendly servers that now consume much less power than previous models. Our standard server configurations now consist of the following energy saving features that help ensure our hosting solutions are as green as possible:

• Low voltage, high efficiency processors use low amounts of energy whilst maximising the level of power that is offered
• High efficiency power supplies are designed to draw power only when it is required and will reduce overall energy wastage rates
• Smart sensors control the power of server fans to ensure that they only provide cooling when required.

Our Green Policies

Our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint aren't simply focused on the services that we offer. We also have measures in place in our office to improve our working practises and usage of particular materials. These include:

• Recycling all unneeded paper
• Use of energy saving light bulbs throughout the workplace
• Operating a completely paperless system with all customer invoices, specs and receipts sent out in electronic format
• Using modern, low-power PCs throughout the office that use similar technologies to what we deploy in our servers

In addition, we are an active partner of Carbon Managers and have made a commitment to planting one new tree every month under the Trees 4 Business campaign. This offsets our remaining carbon usage by over 400%. We proactively monitor our CO2 usage and adjust our tree planting activities in order to compensate any increase.

By offsetting to this degree ensures Storm Internet is a 100% green company. Consequently when you purchase a hosting solution or server from us you can be confident that you too are investing in the environment and a greener future for all.