OVHcloud unveils an innovative carbon calculator for its customers around the world
Customers of OVHcloudone of the world’s largest cloud hosting providers, can now take advantage of a carbon calculator the company offers to generate monthly reports detailing its cloud-related carbon emissions.
OVHcloud has more than 20 years of experience in innovation in setting up a sustainable cloud through the use of water cooling on a large scale, and they want to continue to set the standard for best practices in the industry. The aim of providing customers with greater insight into the carbon footprint of their cloud infrastructure is not only to encourage more responsible use of IT across the industry, but also to ensure more transparency , says the company.
The technique behind their carbon calculator was developed over a period of more than eight months. In its quest for completeness, the approach considers elements such as manufacturing down to the component level. The tool is accessible at any time by the user via the OVHcloud customer panel.
The tool calculates the estimated amount of electricity used by servers based on data from OVHcloud‘s monitors the data center, then maps these servers to their carbon equivalent. It also takes into account equipment used for cooling and networking, as well as transportation, manufacturing, end-of-life and waste management to provide a complete picture of the true carbon footprint.
Carbon emissions levels
The calculator is location based. As a result, reporting depends on the local energy mix, meaning that a server hosted in a country whose energy mix produces lower levels of carbon emissions would result in a different carbon estimate than the same server that is hosted in a countries that produce higher levels of carbon emissions. Market information will complement the reporting produced by the carbon calculator before the end of the year, drawing attention to the Group’s commitment to decarbonization of electricity mixes.
The software stack of the OVHcloud carbon calculator was built in collaboration with Sopra Steria. The methodology (MOU1) was audited by OIJan independent consulting organization specializing in Green IT.
“As an important technology industry leader in Europe, we have an important role to play in promoting a more environmentally friendly digital environment throughout the value chain,” said Fabienne MATHEY-GIRBIG, Executive Director Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development of Sopra Steria. “This includes our workers, our customers and our partners. This is why we are delighted to have participated in the development of the OVHcloud Carbon Calculator, which gives businesses the ability to assess the effect of their cloud-based operations on the environment. We are proud of the trust placed in us to play an active role in this decarbonization initiative, which translates to “We are proud of the responsibility that has been entrusted to us”.
Water consumption efficiency
OVHcloud has long developed a vertically integrated industrial model, with the majority of its data centers built and owned by the Group, featuring proprietary innovations and relying on two factories located in Croix, France, and Beauharnois, Canada, to build its own designed servers. , providing total control over the value chain.
OVHcloud data centers feature proprietary innovations, and the company leverages these two factories to build its own designed servers. Because thanks to this innovative method, to keep an OVHcloud server cold for ten hours while it is under full load, the server would only need a glass of water to be cooled (MOU2), when many other servers on the market need seven times that. as much. The innovation implemented by OVHcloud would allow the company to achieve a global average PUE of 1.28.
These two values, water consumption efficiency and electricity use efficiency, are among the best that the market can offer. They form the basis for future certifications and, together with the recently released carbon calculator, they make OVHcloud‘s commitment to a sustainable cloud environment is quite evident.
“Sustainability is deeply ingrained in our company culture, and we set aggressive goals to reduce the overall impact of our operations on the environment,” said Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud. “We are more aware than ever of the importance for our customers to determine their carbon footprint as accurately as possible. For this reason, we are delighted to be able to provide them with accurate reading and understanding, all with the click of a mouse.
Availability
The OVHcloud Carbon Calculator is now offered free of charge, anywhere in the world, to each of the company’s customers who use its range of BareMetal products and can be used directly from the OVHcloud Control panel. In addition to this, an API is available for access. Customers using the Hosted Private Cloud product will also be able to use the Carbon Calculator in the coming weeks.
