Case study Online Datacenter-Park

TÜV SÜD awarded the 'Energy Efficient Enterprise – Data Centre' certificate to Hetzner Online's data centre park

(July 2011)

According to the German Ministry of the Environment, German data centres could slash their electricity costs by roughly 3.6 billion euros by 2013 by consistently using energy-efficient technologies. Hetzner Online AG, Gunzenhausen, has been committed to energy saving for a long time, as is demonstrated by the successful 'Energy Efficient Enterprise – Data Centre' certification of its data centre park in Vogtland, Germany, by TÜV SÜD Industrie Service. 

Hetzner Online is a leading web hosting company, operating several data centres in Germany. The company has numerous cutting-edge data centres and received the eco (Association of the German Internet Industry) Internet Award in the category 'Hosting' in July 2011, making the company the best hosting provider in Germany. 

During extensive auditing of the data centre park, the TÜV SÜD experts assessed the building, the infrastructure and the technical equipment. A positive aspect was that the data centre exclusively uses waste heat for preheating the coolants and lubricants of the emergency power systems and heating the office rooms. Further positive aspects meriting special mention include the data centre's effective free cooling of the servers and its highly effective uninterruptible power supply. The data centre also carries out systematic recording of its energy data including monitoring of the main consumers.

Highest efficiency in power use

"The certified site boasts a high annual average level of energy efficiency, as is shown by its PUE factor of 1.124", says Dr Michael Bunk, Head of Energy Systems at TÜV SÜD Industrie Service. The PUE or 'Power Usage Effectiveness' is a measure of how efficiently a data centre uses electric power. The PUE is the ratio of the total amount of power used by a data centre facility (including the power used by building services systems) to the power delivered to the computing equipment. While a value of 1.0 stands for one hundred per cent efficiency which is practically never achieved, many data centres range between a PUE of 1.5 and 2.5. "The PUE calculated for Hetzner Online is the best PUE that we have determined within the scope of our certification operations so far", says Dr Michael Bunk.

Over 87 per cent, and thus the vast majority, of electricity in the data centre park goes directly into computer performance. Only a fraction is used for secondary processes, including cooling, ventilation and lighting. "Energy efficiency is one of our priorities", says Michael Horn, Head of Energy Management at Hetzner Online AG. "Against this backdrop, the independent TÜV SÜD certificate is of special significance."