Our commitment to Green IT

OVH, JustHostMe’s partner has been committed to reducing energy consumption in their data centres since 2003, notably by designing and exclusive liquid server cooling system. As a data centre, OVH never ceases to invent new ways of reducing the quantity of electricity needed to run its data centres. This keeps the cost of powering the server down and the saving can be passed on to the customers.

OVH approach since 2003

  • In-house development of exclusive cooling systems

  • Total elimination of air conditioning

  • Savings made reflected in the price of servers

OVH data centres

Since 2010, the new OVH data centres are free from air conditioning the “30% air cooling + 70% water cooling = 0% air conditioning” solution is deployed in all new data centres, in England, France and Canada.

Data Centre

Optimization of air flow

Rather than the traditional free cooling commonly used in data centres, the servers are cooled directly using air from the outside.

The way that the data centre 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.

Liquid Cooling

The 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 heat generated by a servers is thus captured by the liquid, which has a much higher heat transfer capacity than air.

Record PUE index

Liquid Cooling

PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is the index used to measure data centre 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 centre.