Btw, I see your datacenter with the large solar panels on the live.com satellite image. Not sure how outdated that picture is though.

http://www.aiso.net/virtual-desktop-solutions.asp

The main site that will be selling them is here:

http://www.agreenpc.com

In the datacenter, the things I watch for in server and storage hardware is RoHS certification and power efficiency. Some servers and storage are more energy efficient than others. I won’t give any specifics, but most of the ones I work with and provide to customers are RoHS complaint and very efficient. The efficient servers consume less power and less heat, which can significantly decrease the load on datacenter air conditioning.

I agree with what Deli mentions about the inefficiencies of the PC and the unnecessary upgrades. To add for the enterprise level, many companies are moving to thin clients instead of the typical PC. The remote offices I support have thin clients, which are basically small appliances that do the same thing as a PC. One of the recent office I recently built has 100 12W thin clients that are serviced by 3 unix servers (which consume about 450W each). Thin clients also have a much longer service life than a PC. Linuxworld has an interesting article about this, which reduced Verizon’s call center’s electrical use by 30%.

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/050407-thin-client-verizon.html

I don’t think any of this answer’s Siel’s original question about backups.

I have never heard of a disposable bicycle, though!

I don’t really know about online services, although I guess you would have economies of scale–one server holds many people’s stuff, hence your bus analogy. On the other hand, how possible is it to have a truly green online service? Is green compatible with, say, redundancy? Not to mention that you would certainly expect an online service to perform regular backups. So maybe an online service is more like an electric car recharges using electricity from a petrofuel or nuclear power plant–they foist off the ecological cost somewhere else. But I’m just guessing. I’ve been curious myself about the whole topic of computers and greenness.

Maybe I’m too blithe, but I’ve always gone under the assumption that the problems caused by using consumables such as CDs are outweighed by two factors. One would be that having backups is a non-negotiable, in the sense that in America owning a car is for most of us. Flash drives that are bigger than CDs are more affordable these days, but they’re terrible for archiving. And, my monthly cash flow is erratic enough that I don’t want to pay for an online service.

I always assumed that the biggest ecological problem posed by computers was the heavy metals and other nasties that leech out of disposed boards, cards, and especially batteries and monitors. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows upgrades are driving many of the new system purchases. Since this brings in revenue both for Microsoft and the PC manufacturers, I don’t see any incentive for any of those players to change that little scheme. (For that matter, there’s no point in owning a pre-OS 10 Mac either, since there’s no usable browser for that anymore). The best way to fight that power is to install Linux, which the average bear doesn’t want to bother with. So maybe a good green initiative for geeks would be to convert their neighbor’s old pcs into Linux-fueled Internet appliances.

The other major environmental problem is the power used by computer components. The way to solve that is to have your monitor go black after a period of inactivity, have your system go into standby (although some systems aren’t so great about waking up again…), and turn off any peripherals when not in use. My external hard drive hums and vibrates whether or not I’m accessing it, so I keep it off most of the time.

Parents who want to limit their kids’ screen time can green up at the same time by simply hiding the power cord when time’s up. When my son wants to use my laptop, I put away its AC adaptor. The battery is so degenerated that my son gets just over 1/2 hour before it cuts him off.

I don’t have any concrete numbers or figures for any of the above claims, however. I’m just going by occasional articles in the MSM about landfills or the latest thing that’s sickening Chinese factory workers. (Which leads to another consideration: the environmental impact of the manufacture of certain products). The whole thing cries out for some coherent analysis.

As for online service, the green responsibility is transferred to the provider. Ideally, the provider has a few large storage systems that is shared among lots of customers.

Maybe this analogy will help explain the green differences:

flash media - bicycle
cd/dvd - disposible bicycle
hard drive - car
small online service - bus
small non-green online service - private airplane
large online service - train
large non-green online service - large airplane

Without making specific endorsements, do you have any comments or critiques about internet backup services? Things to look for/avoid? Green concerns?

My hosting account has plenty of extra storage space, so I backup my personal data to there. I use an opensource software called rsync to automatically sync most of my data with my online account daily. If you don’t mind manually doing the backups, its very easy install an FTP client on your laptop and manually copy the files to your hosting account.

If you don’t have too much data and willing to a pay monthly, backup.com has a simple to use software that automatically backups your files. My company uses this service for Quickbooks backups and it was pretty easy to install and setup.