Power, cooling and green hosting
Running servers uses power, and power has a footprint. If efficiency or sustainability matters to you — for cost, for reporting, or on principle — it is worth knowing what actually moves the needle and what is just a label.
“Green hosting” ranges from genuine efficiency to a logo on a page. The physics is simple: a server draws power, and some of the facility’s power is spent cooling it rather than computing. The honest levers are efficiency, sourcing, and not running more hardware than you need.
PUE — the efficiency number
Power Usage Effectiveness is total facility power divided by the power actually reaching the servers. A PUE of 1.5 means half as much again is spent on cooling and overhead; closer to 1.2 is efficient. It is the one figure that says how much of the power does useful work.
Where the power comes from
A certificate for renewable power changes the footprint of the same workload. It is worth asking about — but ask how it is sourced, because the quality of these claims varies widely. Real sourcing is verifiable; a sticker is not.
Efficient hardware does more per watt
Newer processors do far more computing per watt than older ones. Sometimes the greenest and cheapest move is the same move: replace three old servers with one modern one. See how long hardware lasts and choosing a CPU.
Consolidation beats everything
The most sustainable server is the one you did not need to run. Right-sizing — see how much server do you actually need — and consolidating idle machines cuts both the bill and the footprint at once. An over-provisioned fleet is waste in every sense.
Amsterdam helps
A cool northern-European climate and a relatively clean grid make Amsterdam a reasonable place to run efficiently to begin with — see why Amsterdam. If sustainability reporting is part of why you are asking, tell us and we will give you what we can substantiate rather than a slogan.
Still stuck? Mail support@novogara.com — an engineer answers, at any hour. Back to the knowledge base