AISO's Commitment to the Environment

AISO is headquartered in Romoland, California just 120 miles East of Los Angeles. Our data center and office is powered by 120 solar panels which generate our electricity. A solar energy specialist recently installed our grid of solar panels from the roof of our old location to our new location using a ground mount system. This grid is owned and operated by AISO to power California's first and only solar-powered hosting company. We are also the first and only 100% completely solar powered hosting company that does not use energy credits, and our solar panels not only power our offices but the data center and servers.  According to BP Solar, our solar panel system will eliminate the production of: 19,890 pounds of Carbon Dioxide (CO2/GHG) per year, 5.9 pounds of Nitrous Oxide (NOX/smog) per year, and 0.45 pounds of Sulfur Dioxide (SO4/acid rain) per year. This is the equivalent of planting 3.5 acres of trees per year or driving a vehicle for 24,671 miles (9.7 times from LA to NY) per year.

AISO has been using solar panels since 2001 to power its data center and office, but wanted a data center redesign for a stronger commitment to help fight pollution and preserving our natural resources. We built our new data center, network and servers from the start to use the lowest amount of energy possible using the latest green design techniques, no other hosting company can do what we do without starting from scratch. So we don't have to run lighting during the day, the building is complete with windows and over 7 solar tubes, which bring in natural light from the outside. The solar tubes also use recycled content in the lenses, fasteners, and trim pieces. Click here to see one of the solar tubes inside our office. Each tube replaces 300 watts worth of electric lamps for 5 hrs./day, 5 days/week. Each solar tube can save over 600 pounds of CO2 (Greenhouse), over 2 pounds of Nitrogen oxide (Smog), and over 5 pounds of Sulfur dioxide (Acid rain) emissions from a coal-burning power plant in as little as one year.

UPDATE: We have recently replaced our old lighting (Fluorescent Light Bulbs) with LED lighting. This reduces our electricity usage and they contain no mercury. Click here to see one of the LED lighting sets inside our office. This one light set in the picture only uses 11.52 Watts instead of 64 Watts we were using before. The old fluorescent tubes are in the picture between the LED lighting set and the solar tube, next to the air conditioner duct. Compact Fluorescent (CFL) and regular Fluorescent Light Bulbs contain mercury which becomes a concern at landfills and trash incinerators where the mercury from many bulbs can escape and contribute to air and water pollution. We also installed a custom power saving device which reduces the amount of power drawn by storing electricity that would be otherwise lost electricity (watts) caused by inductance (motors) in our cooling systems, data center and office. The technology applied by this special power saving device supplies stored electricity back to the inductive loads, thus causing a decrease in demand for electricity of up to 30% in reduced consumption according to the manufacture.

Our data center and office interior is completely built using steel. We felt this would be the most responsible construction method keeping with our green philosophy. The building has several layers of environmentally friendly insulation, which gives us an R-value equal to R 50. This high R-value keeps the cool air in and the hot air out, therefore reducing the amount of energy necessary to run our data center. We use recycled paper products, environmentally sensitive cleansers, recycling bins for any paper, aluminum and plastics, and run energy saving virtual desktop computers for our employees. We have also painted our office and data center walls with green seal certified low VOC paint. Click here to see a picture of the paint we used.

The data center and office is fully fenced and is monitored 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The property has a state of the art alarm and monitoring system, which is monitored and recorded offsite, by our security staff. We can monitor any room anytime as well as the complete premises and servers via a dedicated Internet connection directly thru our monitoring system.

We have a backup generator that runs on propane gas. Propane gas is cleaner burning than diesel, which is found at most other hosting companies. Propane does not emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and produces no sulfur dioxide or particulates which is the primary causes of the greenhouse effect and acid rain. In fact, propane also meets the standards set by the federal Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) for reducing acid rain and controlling air pollution in urban areas. The CAAA heralds propane as one of the solutions to a cleaner, healthier environment. And since propane vaporizes rapidly, it won't contaminate soil or groundwater. The generator is for emergency use only and is tested weekly.
 

Our cooling systems are built by Freus, Inc and are energy star compliant. Because AISO is located in a desert area to maximize our solar panels' electricity production, we have very hot days. We also chose this location due to the great amounts of solar energy radiation the area can receive, which most of the US does not. To counter-act this heat and conserve energy while maintaining cooling, we have chosen a water cooled A/C system. We have 2 different cooling systems, which are redundant and are serviced monthly. The cooling systems monitor outside air temperature and when it gets 50°F or below, they suck the outside air in, filter it and direct it into the data center thus saving electricity when its cool outside. To see more information on how our energy efficient cooling systems work, click here.

Most data centers experience "server sprawl" because every time they get a new application or need a new server, they get a new physical server to suck up more electricity and need more cooling. So in most data centers, the servers are running at 4 percent to 8 percent capacity. AISO saw this issue and purchased a solution to stop it. Now, instead of assigning each server an application or a task, virtualization lets AISO put individual physical servers into their own "virtual machines," increasing the physical servers efficiency and shrinking our data centers' server footprint, cooling needs and electricity usage. All of AISO servers are running within VMware's virtualization technology to reduce cooling and electrical requirements with a 50:1 ratio of virtual servers to quad core physical servers. Click here to see VMware's web site of AISO's Success Story. We also purchase AMD powered IBM BladeCenter servers, which consume less then half the power of normal data center servers. Fourteen of the regular 625 watt servers consumes 8,750 watts, where as fourteen comparable blade servers only consume 3,990 watts, that is 285 watts per server. Using blade servers also results in less heat, and therefore, less power spent on server-room cooling. For more information on the blades and the IBM BladeCenter with AMD processors AISO uses, click here.

We are also in the process of designing a green roof for our data center. The green roof is a layer of dirt 3 to 4 inches thick with drought resistant plants. The new green roof can reduce our cooling requirements by up to 50%. When finished, AISO will be the first and only public data center in North America with a green roof. We are also working on installing solar water heaters for any hot water heating in our restroom (If you cannot install these, then you can always install a Nortiz tankless water heater). With the help of environmental building consultants, Green Ideas, we are in the process of LEED^® certifying our data center and office with the U.S. Green Building Council, which AISO is a member of.