As AI and cloud services continue to boom worldwide, so do the energy demands for data centres.
As the backbone of the digital world, data centres currently account for roughly 1.5% of global electricity consumption. This is expected to rise on account of greater customer need, as they seek to better maintain equipment, maximise data centre operations and reduce downtime.
As a result, data centres may account for as much as one-third of the anticipated increase in US electricity demand over the next two years, doubling between 2024 and 2026.
With this in mind, Data Centre Magazine speaks with Pascal Jaillon, SVP Products & Digital Accounts at OVHcloud, about how the company plans to scale in a sustainable way to meet rising customer needs. He also explains how AI and cloud demands require data centre operators to get creative with the environmental strategies to continue achieving innovation.
How is sustainability currently driving best practices in cloud computing?
Many cloud providers have established clear objectives for sustainable operations that include everything from the impact of individual components to optimising water, energy and carbon use.
As a global infrastructure provider, OVHcloud was among the first to integrate advanced water-cooling technology, and those early investments have become a cornerstone of our sustainability efforts for over 20 years.
Our progress toward climate neutrality and managing our environmental impact across every aspect of our business has naturally evolved into the establishment of best practices in three main areas of focus:
- Reducing IT components waste
- Optimising data centre energy and water consumption
- Continuously innovating with advanced water-cooling systems has enabled our entire ecosystem to optimise our industrialisation processes
How does OVHcloud plan to meet rising demands for cloud services?
There are two measures that play an essential role in meeting future demand – maintaining a broad range of offerings and establishing a sustainable method for expanding overall capacity.
For example, options across Hosted Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Bare Metal servers allows our partners to choose from hundreds of server options and models, enabling them to utilise the best possible cloud approach for every workload. In these situations, we can work with our partners to better ensure that their infrastructure is suitable for the application environment.
Our advanced water-cooling systems also play a major role in how we will effectively meet rising demand. First, new technologies like AI are pushing the ability of traditional air-cooled data centres to their limit in terms of managing heat and power use. Our facilities, having already been designed to integrate water-cooling technology, can efficiently cool modern processors with high thermal envelopes, eliminating the need for newly built or upgraded data centres.
Water cooling also allows us to utilise space much more efficiently with a server density per square foot that is typically four times that of cloud providers who rely on air-cooled infrastructure.
Talk to us about OVHcloud’s sustainable data centre solutions and how this will help it achieve climate neutrality.
OVHcloud has established a timeline for achieving climate neutrality by 2030 and has committed to eliminate all landfill waste by 2025.
For OVHcloud, managing our environmental impact typically starts before a data centre is even operational. Due to the somewhat extreme environmental impact of the base materials required for new construction (accounting for as much as 37% of global emissions) OVHcloud prefers to utilise existing industrial sites. This approach has allowed us to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our operation, while also moving much faster to stand up new facilities.
We also produce our own racks and servers based on an industrial model that standardises component assembly, helping to reduce waste.
Once our data centres are operational, we closely monitor and regularly report the energy efficiency of each data centre. We rely on independently verified and audited Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) measures to paint a complete picture of data centre efficiency. With a PUE range of 1.1-1.3 and a WUE that is generally between .4-1 litre per kilowatt-hour, OVHcloud is at the forefront among both hyperscale and alternative cloud providers.
From an operational efficiency stand-point we also measure the footprint of all components using a multi-criteria lifecycle analysis that identifies the main impacts for each component. This information, along with our industrial model, enables us to analyse servers and capitalise on the reverse supply chain by reusing, repairing or recycling individual server components.
How does OVHcloud plan to keep its data centre operations sustainable moving forward?
As part of our larger corporate commitment to sustainability, we report on our overall environmental impact – not only in terms of greenhouse gases emissions, but also with energy, water, waste, transportation management and how we’ve been sharing our carbon footprint since 2017.
We disassemble 100% of our servers and strictly test their components to give them a second and third life, either in circuit or through external recycling and refurbished components. The use of refurbished components in our servers allows us to prolong their lifetime with an average duration of 4.5 years and up to 9 years; and thus, to avoid some manufacturing carbon emissions and the environmental risks associated with electronics (e-waste) waste.
Furthermore, the majority of OVHcloud data centres are rehabilitated buildings, ensuring we are walking the walk in exhausting all data centres useability before investing in wasteful resources.
By being transparent about our environmental targets and performance, we aim to empower our customers and partners to further scale the full potential of a sustainable cloud, in addition to remaining at the forefront of developing best practices operationally.
How can businesses best scale their cloud deployments in OVHcloud’s data centres?
Migrating to the cloud is a complex process and many companies have yet to take the first step. Others, who made the move, are now rethinking their approach and moving workloads or applications from hyperscale providers to another environment including in some cases back to on-premises environments.
The value we bring to our customers is really tied to our large portfolio of cloud services and the sustainable ecosystem we developed more than 20 years ago. Customers can start moving workloads to our dedicated servers following a “Lift & Shift” approach or consider developing cloud native apps with our Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.
Our vertical integration, coupled with the fact that we own our own network, allows us to squeeze costs. This allows us to offer our customers more performance at a better price, flexibility, scalability, and transparency than any other cloud provider.
From engineering to server manufacturing, infrastructure design to data centre management, we keep costs under control. Manufacturing our own products also gives us a great deal of agility and flexibility. This is a huge benefit for customers who want to control their own data, and this is a big reason why OVHcloud US has gained momentum in the US market.
Since OVHcloud owns its network, there are no hidden fees on our customers' monthly invoices. There are no ingress or egress fees or charges for API calls. With no fluctuating invoices, our customers can plan for and manage their operational expenses.
We are very focused on public cloud, containers, Kubernetes, and AI and private cloud solutions, including VMware and Nutanix brands. We are continuing to build out our public cloud products, including recently launching a managed database offering, and, coming soon, AI and machine learning tools.
The ever-growing demands of AI highlight the need for sustainable solutions. By choosing OVHcloud, our customers can be confident they’re powering their future with a company that prioritises the planet.
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