Can we hack open source #cloud platforms to help reduce emissions?

Can we hack open source #cloud platforms

to help reduce emissions?

Tom Raftery

#Monktoberfest 2012, Portland Maine

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• Lead analyst, energy and sustainability practice, RedMonk

• CIX, Chip & Zenith

• GreenMonk.net

• twitter.com/tomraftery

• tom@redmonk.com

• +34 677 695 468

• SlideShare.net/TomRaftery

Tom Raftery

CIX, Chip & Zenith - involvement with Cloud, going back to late 90’s

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Garret FitzGerald 1926-2011

Unlikely politician - highly intelligent academic, unimpeachable integrity, head in the clouds(!)

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Garret FitzGerald

Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/caribb/5391899550/

Before he became a politician - In 1949 analyzed the earliest published Aeroflot timetables, and produced one of the first accurate estimations of the size of Russia's airliner fleet - previously a closely guarded secret

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Garret FitzGerald

Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_brace/2568478072/

KGB thought he was a spy!

And look an image with KGB logo - and a sleeping cat!

Proving there’s no such thing as security by obscurity & the internet rocks!

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No transparency

Cloud problem

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Problem

http://greenmonk.net/2011/07/21/carbon-disclosure-projects-emissions-reduction-claims-for-cloud-computing-are-flawed/

Something I have been blogging about for quite a while

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Problem

http://greenmonk.net/2012/01/09/is-cloud-computing-green/

And giving conference talks about it as well

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Problem

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html

Data centers use vast amounts of electricity

Typically only 6-12% of the electricity powering their servers goes to perform computations - McKinsey & Co.

Rest used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity - dynamic provisioning - i.e. the elastic in ec2!

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Energy ≠ Emissions

NYT article was good but concentrated on energyBear in mind that energy use and emissions are not necessarily relatedEnergy is not a proxy for emissions

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Facebook

Photo http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=193287527693&aid=183026

A practical example of this is...Prineville siteOpen Compute - open sourced the design of DC & hardware!

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Energy

http://opencompute.org/about/energy-efficiency/

“As of the end of Q3 2011, the Prineville data center had a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.08... much lower than the industry standard of 1.5.

Facebook’s energy consumption per unit of computing power has declined by 38%”

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Emissions

http://www.pacificorp.com/es/mining.html

58% of its energy from coal 12% from gas => over 70% from fossil fuel directly.

22.5% is purchased from other suppliers so could also be fossil fuel.

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Dublin

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/07/lightning-in-dublin-knocks-amazon-microsoft-data-centers-offline/

MicrosoftAmazonGoogleIBMSunGardDigital Realty Trust

All have significant DC’s in Dublin

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Emissions

http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/electricitystatistics/

Ireland sources 84% of electricity from fossil fuels

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Emissions

https://restats.decc.gov.uk/cms/national-renewables-statistics/

UK sources >90% of its electricity from fossil fuels

“Renewables contribution to UK electricity generation was 9.4% in 2011”

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Emissions

http://www.pacificorp.com/es/mining.html

The carbon intensity of a data center’s electricity is more important than it’s efficiency!

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Cloud providers

Partial list of cloud companies

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Clean cloud providers

Rackspace’s UK data center runs on 100% renewable powerGoogle have large renewable investments and their operations are carbon neutral

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Clean cloud providers

Greenqloud are based in Iceland where elec is 100% renewable

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Clean cloud providers

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/

Amazon claim 0 carbon for two of their regions

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Clean cloud providers

https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/251306461836222464

but demur when asked to back up the claim

How can we verify it is true?*Sound of crickets chirping*

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Data?

Problem

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Cloud emissions data

Partial list of cloud companies

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Cloud emissions data providers

http://www.sapsustainabilityreport.com/greenhouse-gas-footprint

This is as granular as the data gets!

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Cloud emissions data providers

http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/impact.jsp

Reports 2 weeks lateGives data for carbon saved, not carbon emitted

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Cloud emissions data providers

http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/savings.jsp

Completely inaccurate depending on where in EU on premise is being hostedIf hosted in France or Spain with low carbon intensity - move to Salesforce could increase emissionsWothout Salesforce emissions data, how do we know?

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Why don’t they?

Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/pahudson/7742561802/

Competitive intelligence

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Why don’t they?

Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanmarciniak/2207977707/

Hide their emissions

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Why don’t they?

Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasfisherlibrary/6887173879/

Lack of reporting standardsThis being Monktoberfest, I had to get in a gratuitous beer shot

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Outcome

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

Lack of focus on emissions => increased emissions

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Reminder

A quick recap of 2012 so far...

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Recap

In  the  third  quarter  alone,  crop  produc2on  dropped  $12  billion  “due  to  this  summer’s  severe  heat  and  drought.”    

Drop  in  US  farm  inventories  was  so  sharp  in  the  last  quarter  that  it  wiped  0.2%  off  of  U.S.  GDP  in  the  latest  revision.

In  Texas,  the  drought  has  killed  more  than  300  million  trees.  

Nearly  98%  of  Nebraska  is  in  extreme  to  excep2onal  drought  —  3  months  ago,  none  of  it  was!

hSp://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/30/929381/epic-­‐dust-­‐bowl-­‐of-­‐2012-­‐con2nues/

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/us-usa-wildfires-idUSBRE85L1DD20120627 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19433715

Recap

One of the worst wildfire seasons on recordWildfires in US and EU

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19767627http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/29/world/asia/pakistan-floods/index.html

Recap

Serious floods

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-weather-records-idUSBRE8611EL20120702

Recap

From June 25th - July 1st 2012 in US 2,171 US records broken or matchedIn June 2012 that number is 3,215

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http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/

Recap

Huge issues of ice loss in the arctic

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http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/

Recap

Lack of focus on emissions => increased emissions

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http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/

Recap

Minimum was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below previous record minimum extent in the satellite record, which occurred on September 18, 2007. This is an area about the size of the state of Texas.3.29 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum, representing an area nearly twice the size of the state of Alaska18% below 2007 and 49% below the 1979 to 2000 average

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQotE

Recap

That’s not to mention the issue of arctic methane - what its effects will be are, as yet, unknown (but they won’t be good!)

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Cloud computing’s emissions don’t directly cause all these issues.

But they do play a significant part.

Cloud?

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Open Source

Solution?

Here’s where we can help

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Solution?

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Solution?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/viamoi/3465644425/

Why not fork open source cloud platforms?

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Solution?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/5369447689/

Add in emissions metrics & reporting tools

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Solution?

http://www.amee.com/products/

Companies like AMEE already provide API’s for this kind of info

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Solution?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixieroadrash/3769522479/

Get the update accepted back into the core

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Solution?

http://www.eucalyptus.com/about/customers

And thus distributed with next update

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Solution?

http://www.cloudstack.org/users.html

And thus distributed with next update

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Solution?

http://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/

And thus distributed with next update

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btw

https://www.mastodonc.com/dashboard

The Mastodon C dashboard gives stats on emissions from various cloud providers - in case you’re interested in keeping your cloud emissions down.Lot of it is guestimated data - need real data.

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Adding emissions metrics & reporting to cloud computing will help reduce emissions.

Question is - is anyone up for it?

Conclusion

Thanks!Contact information:

Tom RafteryPrincipal Analyst, Energy & Sustainability, RedMonk

Tom@redmonk.com, GreenMonk.net,

Twitter.com/tomraftery+34 677 695 468

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