IT Jungle is running an article on a Web host's datacenter, specifically, its solar setup. Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO.net) lays claim to being a 100 percent solar energy host.

The article describes how virtualization played a role in expanding their hosting capacity while staying within the power envelope provided by its solar setup:

Sirius' solution to this situation was to replace the 120 servers with four energy-efficient xSeries Model 346 servers running Intel Xeon processors. In addition to choosing more energy efficient servers, Sirius implemented virtualization technology from VMware to carve multiple virtual machines (VMs) out of the Model 346s to run the various workloads. On the back end, Sirius installed a NetApp storage area network (SAN) with 6 TB of storage, further virtualizing storage and driving up efficiency.

The solar system cost AISO.net $100,000 (here are the panels for you to gawk at) and the company routinely sells back to the grid. In fact, it hasn't fired up its backup generator once, aside from testing it, presumably.

Unlike the insanely and inexplicably popular cat macros (geeks prefer LOLTrek), the future of LOLDatacenter looks bleak, as our little stab at it shows.

[via EcoGeek]