Supporting Green Efforts is Key
Through the strategic "green-partnership" between Solar VPS and Green Living Ideas (GreenLivingIdeas.com), we are making a difference. Along with being hosted on our "SolarGreen" certified hardware, Solar VPS and Green Living Ideas are working together to educate other small businesses and entrepreneurs on how to become greener in business and in life.
SolarGreen Partners
Green Living Ideas (GreenLivingIdeas.com) provides ideas, tips, and information to help you improve the environmental sustainability of every aspect of your life: alternative energies, alternative vehicles and transportation, green office/business technologies, green building, health and fitness, natural foods, recycling-and everything in between. Green Living Ideas is the most comprehensive sustainable living website ever assembled, with information covering over 200 different areas of life. We've assembled the world's top green living authors and experts to bring you the latest info on green and sustainable living, including articles, tips, podcasts, blogs, and vlogs.
Solar VPS's SolarGreen-certified web hosting platform is a perfect fit for GreenLivingIdeas.com since it is founded by a responsibly-minded company, and the underpinnings are a veritable greatest hits of green technology "best practices".. as a result, Solar VPS has been our ideal host not only in terms of technical reliability, performance, and customer service, but in terms of their corporate ethos in the realm of sustainable business practices.
Sean Daily
CEO - Green Living Ideas
Sending the Green Message
GreenTalk Radio is a podcast that helps listeners in their efforts to lead more eco-friendly lifestyles. The show is all about sharing simple, easy ways to go green in every area of life. Host Sean Daily, CEO and co-founder of GreenLivingIdeas.com, leads guests in lively discussions about the important issues related to living, working, and consuming in a more sustainable fashion. Guests interviewed on the show include green experts from around the world, including top executives from innovative companies, authors, inventors, and green visionaries.
Why We Are Going Green
In today's world of high energy costs and decreased energy availability, reducing energy consumption has never been more important. At Solar VPS we feel it is our economic, social and environmental responsability to do our part to reduce power consumption in all areas of our business.
How We Are Going Green
Solar VPS is committed to promoting and adopting energy efficient measures across all areas of our business. From choosing energy efficient server components for our customer offerings to reducing power consumption in our global reaching offices, becoming 'green' has never been more important to us. To address our new energy conserving corporate standards, we develop a brand to symbolize our green initiatives called "SolarGreen".
The name SolarGreen was chosen to signify our efforts to become green and stay green. While we don't claim to have all the answers to being environmentally responsible, we understand that it is important for all small businesses in the United States and across the world to do their part to save our planet. In order to do our part, we developed the SolarGreen initiative around 3 goals.
Reduce Customer Energy Consumption
The best way to get our customers to cut energy consumption is to build VPS servers that use less energy. Starting January 1, 2008, all new Solar VPS hardware nodes were required to meet certain "green" standards including low wattage CPUs, energy efficient memory and lower power consuming hard disks.
CPUs
Intel low voltage Xeon CPUs use 12.5 watts per CPU core, boasting 35% to 60% power savings over traditional 80W and 120W CPUs.
DDR2 Memory
DDR2 memory uses 1.5 Volt technology which reduces energy consumption from 10% - 15% over conventional DIMM memory
7200 RPM SATA & 10,000 RPM 2.5in Hard Drives
Our chosen server SATA 7200RPM and SAS 10K RPM 2.5 inch drives deliver power savings in upwards of 30% over 15K RPM SCSI
Reduce Company Energy Consumption
Building low power consuming servers is good but it certainly isn't enough. In order to educate our team members about conserving energy, we must practice our SolarGreen iniative internally. All Solar VPS branch offices are required to practice energy efficiency including use of virtualized office servers and desktops using energy efficient configurations, use of public transportation to and from work and telecommuting.
Virtualized Branch Offices
Most Solar VPS team members work in virtual operating systems through the use of virtualized desktops and laptops. Working in virtual desktops allows team members to perform multiple tasks without the need for mutiple workstations. In addition, most branch offices run with as few as one virtualized server that performs the roles of file serving, internal DNS, VPN and more.
Energy Saving Components
Our internal office servers also use power saving Core2Duo processors, DDR2 RAM and energy efficient "Green Power" hard drives by Western Digital which offer a power savings of 40% over conventional hard disks.
Public Transportation
Public transportation, also known as mass transit, public transit and public transport, moves groups of people around in urban areas, and it's difficult to imagine an environmentally-conscious city lifestyle without public transportation. All Solar VPS team members are encouraged to use public transportation to get to and from work, and most do!
Telecommuting
Many Solar VPS team members telecommute and for Solar VPS, the rewards far exceed a "feel good" reward of reducing the impact of the 23 billion gallons of gas that Americans use up just in commuting to and from work. The benefits both improve the Solar VPS company image in the community in addition to strengthening our bottom line profits.
Support Green Efforts
While many companies claim to be green, very few make a committment to support green efforts. Through a strategic partnership with GreenLivingIdeas.com, Solar VPS is working to promote green change in business and in life. Along with being hosted on our "SolarGreen" certified hardware, Solar VPS and Green Living Ideas are working together to educate other small businesses and entrepreneurs on how to become greener in business and in life.
Solar VPS and sister company MessageWire, are the exclusive hosting partners for Green Living Ideas, providing an end-to-end solution for all business communication for Green Living Ideas. Solar VPS CEO, Ross Brouse, also writes and contributes regularly to the Green Living Ideas web site.
To get more information about Green Living Ideas, please visit their web site at GreenLivingIdeas.com
"Our SolarGreen initiative exists to practice, educate and promote green efforts both within our business and the community. Through our internal efforts and strategic partnerships, we have the responsibility and more importantly, the power to make positive change for the future of our planet."
Ross Brouse
CEO - Solar VPS
Virtual Desktops
Virtualized Desktops
We use virtualized desktops to optimize team member performance while reducing costs and energy consumption.
Energy Saving Servers
Intel Low Voltage Xeon CPUs
Our chosen low voltage Xeon CPUs use 12.5 watts per CPU core, boasting a 35% to 60% power savings over traditional 80W and 120W CPUs
DDR2 Memory
DDR2 memory uses 1.5 Volt technology which reduces energy consumptions from 10% - 15% over conventional DIMM memory
7200RPM & 10K RPM 2.5in HDDs
Our chosen server SATA and SAS 7200RPM and 10K RPM 2.5 inch drives deliver power savings in upwards of 30% over 15K RPM SCSI
Office Energy Savings
Intel Core2Duo
We use Intel desktop Core2Duo (Xeon 3000 series) processors in all office desktops and server configurations. Core 2s offer significant power and cost savings over conventional Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors.
Western Digital "Green Power" Hard Drives
The power savings from using Western Digital "GreenPower" hard drives 'equates to reducing CO2 emissions by up to 60 kilograms per drive per year - the equivalent of taking your car off the road for 14 days each year.'
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