Technical ConfusionBecause Technology Is Confusing

Hi Nikkole,

Thank you for your comment.

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Your example is amusing, but not quite realistic. Sure, there could be issues with technology at this relatively early point, but most web hosts will have found a way to deal with this issue (or they would quickly be out of business).
They either have batteries installed to store the solar energy for those times the sun isn’t out, or they have a grid-tie system that draws from the grid when the sun is not out and feeds it when it is. Others buy carbon offsets to purchase future green energy to offset their current “dirty” energy usage.
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It is realistic. Very realistic. (Ok, maybe the losing millions per minute is unrealistic, but if you’ve ever worked at a hosting company, and a site goes down, in support you do hear unrealistic claims from customers about how much money they’re losing per minute.)

And, consider this: Say you have your hosting at a solar powered green datacenter hosted in Florida. It gets hit by a hurricane, which goes on for hours, and the power is lost immediately? How long are those battery backups going to last? Or the gas generators? Oops. I’ve seen this happen from personal experience (I live in Florida and worked at datacenters located in Florida) - the generators and backups don’t last forever.

For a hosting company to claim they’re green, they should be using a datacenter that is green. If they do whatever they can to offset, fine. Doing our bit for the environment would probably be a better phrase. They’re not green. It’s like me claiming to be green when I drive a vehicle that uses gas if I even look at it:) They’re not using facilities that are green.

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I have recently done a lot of research on this as we changed our hosting provider at http://www.7gens.com to a green host. I also wrote about what we found at our blog at http://7gens.blogspot.com.
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Your hosting company is not green. Your hosting company is using two datacenters:

http://scratchtelecom.com/our_facilities.php - which says nothing about their facilities for “security” reasons. How do you know for sure? They don’t claim to be green or near it. You should be able to go and check out the datacenter to find out for sure - not go by what is said on the internet. Too many people out there jump on the bandwagon and make claims they shouldn’t.

http://prioritycolo.com/about - has battery backup but also uses generators. Would that be propane, natural gas or diesel? They also say nothing about being a green datacenter, or renewable energy…..

Neither datacenter says anything about solar or wind power, or renewable energy. Your hosting company does, but not the places that host their servers.

In this part of the world - Niagara Falls and Toronto, Canada (which is where your hosts datacenter lives) - how much sun is there? Not alot.

How can your hosting company claim to be green? Doing their part, maybe. But why not put their money where their mouth is and do go green? Get a server at AISO. Not just the “credit” thing,
which honestly I’m not a fan of, unless one is using their own solar panels, creating their own energy and then sells that back to the electric company.

I stand behind what I say. Unless a particular hosting company owns their own datacenter (like http://www.aiso.net/solar-powered-network.asp), has installed solar panels, etc, then they are not green (Good thing they have all that sun!). I’m not saying that they’re not trying to do their best, but can they really claim to be green?? They can claim to be, but how does a consumer truly know?

Too many people would say Oh they’re green! and they may truly not be - just using Green as a gimmick, and using customers.

2 other companies that you list:

SolarEnergyHost.com
greenesthost.com

Either are resellers for AISO or have their own servers with the aiso.net datacenter - they can legitimately claim to offer green hosting.

The others you list are with Verizon (who has started a green initiative that will be effect Jan 2009), Infinity internet or Quest. If you read the info on any of their facilities, they say nothing about eco friendly. Granted, they could be hosting at home. And one says nothing about their datacenter, altho they talk about renewable energy in their administrative offices.

I’ve looked into it myself.

Regards,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth-
You seem to have a lot of insider information and I appreciate the lengthy and detailed reply.

I am probably getting in W-A-A-A-Y over my head to try to get deeper into this, since this is NOT my area of expertise. I am just putting together resources in my spare time (I am also full-time employed in a completely different nonprofit sector) to support my husband’s business. We are committed to social and environmental issues and we are trying to learn as much as we can to share with his web design clients, our website visitors and my blog readers. But I think by diving into it I am in for an education (which is what I want anyway), so here goes…

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And, consider this: Say you have your hosting at a solar powered green datacenter hosted in Florida. It gets hit by a hurricane, which goes on for hours, and the power is lost immediately? How long are those battery backups going to last? Or the gas generators? Oops. I’ve seen this happen from personal experience (I live in Florida and worked at datacenters located in Florida) - the generators and backups don’t last forever.
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To be fair, I suspect a hurricane or other significant natural disaster in an area that knocked out the power to a solar-powered data center would likely knock out the grid-powered data center down the street. After all, if a solar-powered center has enough storage capacity to last all night on the shortest days of the year, including extra allowance for having cloudy days, etc. it SHOULD have enough to outlast a storm (unless it’s of the Katrina-type that knocks down an area, solar or not, for several days or weeks). (or maybe I’m being naive..??)

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For a hosting company to claim they’re green, they should be using a datacenter that is green. If they do whatever they can to offset, fine. Doing our bit for the environment would probably be a better phrase. They’re not green.
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I do agree with you that those who generate their own green energy can be considered green, while those who purchase offsets could maybe be considered “greener” than the alternative (meaning those who do neither). This is why in Part 1 of 4 on this topic in my blog (http://7gens.blogspot.com/2008/06/green-web-hosts-part-1-of-3.html), I listed the hosts in two categories, those that generate their own energy and those that purchase offsets, sometimes in combination with other “green” practices.

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Your hosting company is not green. Your hosting company is using two datacenters:

http://scratchtelecom.com/our_facilities.php - ….

http://prioritycolo.com/about - ……

….. Your hosting company does, but not the places that host their servers.

…….
2 other companies that you list:

SolarEnergyHost.com
greenesthost.com

Either are resellers for AISO or have their own servers with the aiso.net datacenter - they can legitimately claim to offer green hosting.

The others you list are with Verizon (who has started a green initiative that will be effect Jan 2009), Infinity internet or Quest. If you read the info on any of their facilities, they say nothing about eco friendly.
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This is where it becomes obvious to me that you have some insider knowledge. How is it possible for the average consumer (for us in selecting our own hosting provider, or in helping our clients choose one) to find this type of information?

I already knew to look beyond the glowing reviews of ThinkHost and DreamHost, which are the highest-paying “green” web host affiliate programs (with affiliate link and coupon code conveniently included), and am encouraging my blog readers to look beyond such reviews by listing the affiliate programs and payouts in part 3 of 4 (http://7gens.blogspot.com/2008/07/green-web-hosts-part-3-of-4.html)

How can we find out where a hosting provider may be outsourcing their clients’ sites to an outside datacenter (that might not be as “green” as their office is)?

How would we know if solar hosting companies are outsourcing their physical hosting to AISO through their reseller program?

How can we find out if the “green” host is really a front for a larger conventional host (like Quest, Verizon or Infinity) that might be their “greener” arm, or their PR stunt?

I want to be sure I am providing accurate AND COMPLETE information to those that read my blog entries on this subject (and despite listing Parts 1-4 of 4 as originally planned, I now have 2-3 follow up drafts that I am working on to come soon…the more I get into this it seems the deeper I fall down the Rabbit Hole!)

Again, I appreciate the in-depth response and hope you have some more time to answer my questions. I will definitely be linking back to this conversation as one of my future posts on the topic.

Gratefully,
-Nikkole

Hi Nikkole!

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You seem to have a lot of insider information and I appreciate the lengthy and detailed reply.
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It’s not insider info, I’m just going on what I found in researching the different datacenters.

>>>>>>
I am probably getting in W-A-A-A-Y over my head to try to get deeper into this, since this is NOT my area of expertise. I am just putting together resources in my spare time (I am also full-time employed in a completely different nonprofit sector) to support my husband’s business. We are committed to social and environmental issues and we are trying to learn as much as we can to share with his web design clients, our website visitors and my blog readers. But I think by diving into it I am in for an education (which is what I want anyway), so here goes…

>>>>>>

It’s not my area of expertise either – the green thing. I do, however have a friend who is green – she’s been green for years, way before it was the thing to do, and she does everything she can to be green. She can claim the label. And while I may not agree completely with all of her ideas, I respect her because she lives what she says.

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To be fair, I suspect a hurricane or other significant natural disaster in an area that knocked out the power to a solar-powered data center would likely knock out the grid-powered data center down the street. After all, if a solar-powered center has enough storage capacity to last all night on the shortest days of the year, including extra allowance for having cloudy days, etc. it SHOULD have enough to outlast a storm (unless it’s of the Katrina-type that knocks down an area, solar or not, for several days or weeks). (or maybe I’m being naive..??)

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That paragraph was based on Hurricane Wilma (my aim was to make a point but it didn’t work the way I wanted, lol.) We didn’t get anything near like Katrina, but from the beginning of the storm to it’s end was definitely a good 24 – 30 hours of complete cloud cover. My particular area was without power for a week, some areas had more, some had less but a week was pretty normal.

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For a hosting company to claim they’re green, they should be using a datacenter that is green. If they do whatever they can to offset, fine. Doing our bit for the environment would probably be a better phrase. They’re not green.
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I do agree with you that those who generate their own green energy can be considered green, while those who purchase offsets could maybe be considered “greener” than the alternative (meaning those who do neither). This is why in Part 1 of 4 on this topic in my blog (http://7gens.blogspot.com/2008/06/green-web-hosts-part-1-of-3.html), I listed the hosts in two categories, those that generate their own energy and those that purchase offsets, sometimes in combination with other “green” practices.

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Your hosting company is not green. Your hosting company is using two datacenters:
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This is where it becomes obvious to me that you have some insider knowledge. How is it possible for the average consumer (for us in selecting our own hosting provider, or in helping our clients choose one) to find this type of information?

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There’s nothing insider about it, really. It’s a matter of doing searches on:

Your domain name – A simple whois search
Your IP address – I search an IP Whois Database
A Whois search on your nameservers
An IP Whois search on your nameservers.

I won’t elaborate here, but I’ll come up with a post in a day or 2 outlining how and why I do it. There are tools on the web you can use.

I have a Sam Spade tool that I’ve used for years that enables me to do all this locally on my computer. He used to have these tools online, but no longer does. Since I’m in the webhosting business, this is something I use all the time. It helps greatly in researching this stuff.

Your particular domain was easy: everything is right out there, which is a good thing because it does show that hostpapa isn’t necessarily hiding anything, their nameservers lead to where you need them to go.

But in some cases, getting this info is like pulling teeth. Some hosts hide their info in their whois. (This is a red flag. If you’re a legit company, why hide your whois info?)

>>>>>>>>>

I already knew to look beyond the glowing reviews of ThinkHost and DreamHost, which are the highest-paying “green” web host affiliate programs (with affiliate link and coupon code conveniently included), and am encouraging my blog readers to look beyond such reviews by listing the affiliate programs and payouts in part 3 of 4 (http://7gens.blogspot.com/2008/07/green-web-hosts-part-3-of-4.html)

How can we find out where a hosting provider may be outsourcing their clients’ sites to an outside datacenter (that might not be as “green” as their office is)?

>>>>>>>>>>>

Here’s some general server blathering:

All websites need a server. And that server needs somewhere to live, whether it be in someone’s living room, office or in a datacenter. Most people don’t have the know how to host at home, so they need a datacenter.

If you use a datacenter, you generally rent the server or servers you’re going to use. Big companies (like Verio) own their own datacenters and servers, they have the money and employees to customize them however they want, and then they lease or rent servers and datacenter space to the public. As a customer, you won’t have physical access to the server, if you need to change hardware; you pay to have the datacenter employees to do it for you.

In some cases you can buy a server or server and house it in a datacenter – you’re responsible for the care and feeding of it, you go to the datacenter to work on them, or bring them home if need be. (I did this when I was learning – I bought my first server, housed it at a local datacenter, and kept visiting that datacenter because I kept locking myself out of my server because I messed with my firewall)

In both cases I outline above: you’re at the mercy of the datacenter you’re using. And unless they’ve built that datacenter from the ground up, or have heavily modified the datacenter because they own it, chances are it isn’t green. Simple as that. If they’ve done this, they would say so on their website, and probably have a press release about it as well, ala AISO.

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How would we know if solar hosting companies are outsourcing their physical hosting to AISO through their reseller program?
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You can try doing the searches above, which should lead you to the datacenter where the site lives – but it doesn’t always. If you are not led *somewhere* legit, I would regard it as fishy.

Finding a reseller is a bit more difficult. I don’t have problems with resellers except coming from a support angle: which is simply that most resellers don’t have a clue about the hosting business, and when a customer needs support this can get them into serious trouble when it comes to needing that support. Resellers don’t always know the right questions to ask, and it can cause issues on both sides.

There are also resellers that know more than the support they deal with at the hosting company. He or she is the one that doesn’t need to contact support because he (or she) can fix most issues without contacting support.

Being a reseller for a webhost is a great way of finding out if you can actually be a webhost. A lot of time is required for the web hosting business and your average user doesn’t realize this. Reselling gives them a taste.

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How can we find out if the “green” host is really a front for a larger conventional host (like Quest, Verizon or Infinity) that might be their “greener” arm, or their PR stunt?
>>>>>>>>>

By doing the searches above, getting the info you need, then going to the datacenter’s webpage and researching that way.

You can also, sometimes, but not always, find a reseller like this. If I want to know if someone is a reseller, I’ll look at the tool I reference here:

http://technicalconfusion.com/domain-names/cool-dns-tool.php

If you come up with a bunch of domain names that has host or hosting in it, they’re probably a reseller. But be aware this is not written in stone. A lot depends on how the server is setup.

>>>>>>>>>
I want to be sure I am providing accurate AND COMPLETE information to those that read my blog entries on this subject (and despite listing Parts 1-4 of 4 as originally planned, I now have 2-3 follow up drafts that I am working on to come soon…the more I get into this it seems the deeper I fall down the Rabbit Hole!)
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Ahh, blogging. Don’t you just love it? I can’t tell you how many drafts and notes I have floating around.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll work on a post or two that tells you how to get the info. It’s not hard by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a little involved and would actually work better in a post.

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Again, I appreciate the in-depth response and hope you have some more time to answer my questions. I will definitely be linking back to this conversation as one of my future posts on the topic.

Gratefully,
-Nikkole
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No problem. I tend to go on a bit.

Here’s something that may interest you – you may have already seen it. I saw a clip of it on CNN for the second time yesterday. It’s an article on how one funeral parlor is green. When I first heard about it, I was like EWWW! But by the end of the article it really caught my eye.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00E0D91631F937A35755C0A9609C8B63

Regards,

Elizabeth

[...] of 7gens and I are discussing green web hosting, and how to research if a company is really green, or just claiming to be. It’s a long [...]