Inspired by a Reuven Cohen post, James discusses the paradox of green and cloud computing. On the surface, cloud computing appears to be environmentally friendly due to the economies of scale offered by cloud computing resources and facilities. However, the ease of consumption has actually increased total compute, and therefore energy, utilization. James quoting Reuven’s post:
“We now have the ability to run our applications on thousands of servers, but previously this wasn’t even possible. To say it another way, we can potentially use several years worth of energy in literary a few hours, where previously this wasn’t even an option. So in direct contrast, hypothetically we’re using more resources, not less. On the flip side, if we bought those thousand servers and had them running (underutilized), the power usage would be significantly higher. But then again, buying those servers would have been out reach for most, so it’s not a fair comparison. There we are–back, at where we started. You may use 80 percent less energy per unit, but have 1,000 percent more capacity, which at the end of the day means you’re using more, not less energy.”
After citing observations from Simon Wardley and Krishnan Subramanian, James concludes:
“…the increased efficiency of the hardware components in most cloud data centers and the increased utilization of these components mean that we are almost certainly doing more work per unit of energy consumed than before. However, I think we’ll have to wait awhile before there is evidence of the overall effect of cloud computing on the planet…one way or the other.”
Interesting to consider how efficiency and ease of access are changing behavior. The next question I suppose, is what’s the outcome (productivity) garnered by the increased consumption? Is it value-add? Or, compute-gluttony?
Related posts:
- James Urquhart: Understanding Infrastructure 2.0
- James Urquhart: It’s not (just) the data destination, it’s also the journey
- Kathrin Winkler, EMC: The Greener Computing Option
- @ Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit: Report from Trenches: What’s Working in Virtualization & Green IT
- @ Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit: Tod Nielsen, VMWare
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
That final paragraph contains a great set of questions, Brenda. Even better (and related to Ruv’s and my posts) is how we measure whether it’s productivity or gluttony. I believe there will be lots of great intentions behind projects that bear little fruit at first, but that we’ll get better quickly at calculating the investment risks/returns of new classes of applications enabled by cloud.
After that, the gluttony will due to sheer neglegance, as opposed to the ignorance that drives it today…
Hi James,
Thanks for stopping by. Agreed, measurement will be critical for all aspects of cloud computing adoption. One challenge though, is the lack of granular baseline metrics in enterprises/agencies today. Most measurement — cost, time, service levels — is done at aggregate levels: project, department, and/or application. However, as more IT organizations adopt a business mindset, and service-orient their offerings/portfolios, we’ll see a focus on cost of capability, which will set the stage for effective cloud (and non-cloud) computing measurements, analysis and decision-making.
-brenda