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2.7 KiB
Text
77 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
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title: How to store your data without CO2 emission
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---
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pub_date: 2019-11-20
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author: ungleich
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---
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: yes
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---
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abstract:
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Avoiding CO2 emissions in data storage is a daily task, too
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---
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body:
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When we talk about climate change or sustainability, we usually think
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about factories or cars. What we usually don't anticipate is how much
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we actually contribute to the climate change by our digital behaviour.
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## How data is stored
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Your data is usually stored in one of the many data centers in the
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world. To save your data, multiple disk or even multiple servers are
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used to ensure that your data is safely stored.
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When you open up your mobile phone to browse pictures or to read your
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email, you access the servers to retrieve your data.
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## How data centers are operated
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Most data centers use energy from the grid. This energy can be either
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produced by coal, nuclear power or renewable energy. Unfortunately,
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most of them don't run on renewable energy. Some do buy CO2
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certificates to compensate this fact.
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Energy in a data center is spent on one side for actually running the
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servers that store your data and on cooling on the other hand. The
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amount of energy used for cooling can be quite significant, too.
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So even if you are living a very green and sustainable way, you might
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be contributing to CO2 emissions by using your default data storage.
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## An alternative: the sustainable way of saving data
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So how can we tackle this situation?
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We have worked hard here in Switzerland to create the [Data Center
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Light](https://datacenterlight.ch), a complete alternative
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approach to save as much CO2 emissions, as possible.
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And this is how it is done:
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* instead of buying certificates, we use 100% renewable energy
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* instead of buying energy, we produce it locally (using PV and a
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local hydro power plant)
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* instead of building new data centers, we modernise existing factory
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halls
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* instead of buying new servers, we buy 2nd hand (with new disks/ssds)
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## The sustainable data center
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With this approach, there is practically no CO2 emission from power
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consumption and also the grey energy is minimised. The team of
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[ungleich](https://ungleich.ch) is very proud to offer a variety of
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products that are built with sustainability in mind:
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* [Sustainable Data Storage: Glarnercloud )(https://glarnercloud.ch)
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* [Sustainable Virtual Private Servers](https://datacenterlight.ch)
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* [Sustainable IPv6 only VPS](https://ipv6onlyhosting.com/)
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* [Sustainable IPv6 VPNs](https://ipv6vpn.ch)
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* [Sustainable IPv6 Backup](https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/ipv6-backup/)
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If you have any questions about it, you can reach us at
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**sustainability at ungleich.ch** or in the [ungleich
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chat](https://chat.ungleich.ch).
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