Web apps and data hosting don’t always come through the Cloud. Historically, clients have been owning their own machines in their facilities, then they started renting entire machines (CPU) to outsourced suppliers. Then Cloud appeared.
What is the difference between on-prem DataCenter, outsourced DataCenter, and Cloud services?
On-prem: group of servers that you own and control privately, on your facilities. In this case, you should report your energy consumption to the Building module.
Outsourced datacenter: Lease of data center resources from a third-party service provider. Most of the time, the client rents entire machines (physical level). In this case, we advise reporting it through the data center expense during the Categorization by choosing the "physical servers" category.
Cloud: more important than the simple outsourcing of computerized data storage, it also provides computing power that can be used remotely via the Internet. Moreover, very flexible because depending on the computer skills, the user can manage their server themselves or just use it remotely in self-service. Most of the time, the client can go into deeper service granularity by the use of virtual machines (a physical machine contains several virtual machines). If you don't have the Cloud module, we advise reporting it through the cloud expense during the Categorization by choosing the "cloud servers" category.
Datacenters induce greenhouse gas emissions in several ways:
By their power consumption;
By the manufacturing of the used infrastructure and equipment;
By refrigerant leakages.
Electrical consumption
👉 Electrical consumption occurs at two levels:
Within the Datacenter
During data transfers with terminals outside the Datacenter
Most of the time, energy consumption is expressed in kWh for facilities' energy consumption.
To carry out this study, Greenly needs:The Datacenter's power consumption
To be expressed in kWh
For all your sites, or per site
Each site has to be associated to a specific geographical location (country)
Make sure to include the PUE (power usage effectiveness) of your datacenter building if it is not already included in the datacenter’s power consumption.
The amount of data leaving and entering the datacenter
To be expressed in Gigabytes
If this information is not available, it is possible to remove the data transfer from the scope of the study. This will then be specified in your carbon footprint.
The Hardware
👉 Next comes the part related to the Hardware used within the Datacenter.
Manufacturing this equipment and extracting the necessary materials indeed lead to GHG emissions.To carry out this study, Greenly is based on an IT inventory, which includes this information:
The type of device (server, firewall, switch, etc.)
The model of each device
The manufacturer (Dell, HP, Huawei, etc)
The acquisition date (date at which the equipment got into the DC inventory)
The average lifespan of the types of devices used
If some of the devices used are second hand, you can notify it, and specify how long it was used before arriving in your organization.
In the event that some of this information is not available, the study loses granularity, but Greenly takes care of it by using average data.
Air-conditioned spaces
👉 Finally, air-conditioned area lead to refrigerant gas leakage.
A lot of refrigerant gas are considered as greenhouse gases, just like carbon dioxide or methane.
To take into account these leaks, Greenly is based on :
The refrigerant use
If this information is not available, a reference refrigerant will be used as a basis for calculation.
The amount of refrigerant gas that has leaked during the studied. Two alternatives to determine it :
the total mass of reloaded gas during the study period. This information is most of the time provided by the air conditioning system maintenance operator.
leakage amount approximation by using the electricity consumption per site and per refrigerant type.
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