OVH has been committed to reducing energy consumption in these data centers since 2003, notably by designing an exclusive liquid server cooling system.
As a hosting provider, OVH never ceases to invent new ways of reducing the quantity of electricity needed to run its data centers. This keeps the cost of powering the servers down and the savings can be passed on to the customers.
Our approach since 2003
- In-house development of exclusive cooling systems
- Total elimination of air conditioning
- Savings made reflected in the price of servers
Our own data centers
Since 2010, the new OVH data centers are free from air conditioning.
The "30% air cooling + 70% water cooling = 0% air conditioning" solution is deployed in all new data centers, in France and Canada.
Optimization of air flow
Rather than the traditional free cooling commonly used in data centers, the servers are cooled directly using air from the outside.
The way that the data center has actually been designed plays a key role in this highly effective air flow management system. The tower design allows fresh air to directly reach the front of the servers, which regulates the temperature of the fans and air inlets.
- Fresh air passing in front of the servers
- Air heated by the components is evacuated at the back of the servers
- Hot and cold air flow separated
Industrialization of liquid cooling
One of the key elements of the OVH strategy in terms of energy efficiency is industrial deployment of water cooling systems.
This idea, born in 2003 and going against the current practices of the time, consists of using liquid inside the server itself to cool the processors. The liquid is carried by heat exchangers which are positioned on the processors and other components that emit a lot of heat.
70% of the heated generated by a server is thus captured by the liquid, which has a much higher heat transfer capacity than air.
Record PUE index
PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is the index used to measure data center energy efficiency. Thanks to efforts to reduce energy consumption and especially electricity, OVH has been able to achieve a PUE of between 1 and 1.2.
A better result than the average data center.
OVH Green products and services
The virtual machines of the Dedicated Cloud can be located at the BHS data center where they benefit from the hydroelectric energy of the nearby damn.
Mainly clusters are hosted in RBX4, the first OVH data center to eliminate air conditioning Big Data.
In 2004, OVH developed an innovative water cooling technology. This liquid cooling system is actually located on the racks and it enables evacuation of 70% of the heat emitted by the servers.
OVH Dedicated Servers
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