Can we hack open source #cloud platforms
to help reduce emissions?
Tom Raftery
cloudstack collaboration conference 2012,
Las Vegas
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Saturday 1 December 12
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• Lead analyst, energy and sustainability practice, RedMonk
• CIX, Chip & Zenith
• GreenMonk.net
• twitter.com/tomraftery
• +34 677 695 468
• SlideShare.net/TomRaftery
Tom Raftery
Saturday 1 December 12CIX, Chip & Zenith - involvement with Cloud, going back to mid 90’s
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Data?
http://www.wspenvironmental.com/media/docs/ourlocations/usa/NRDC-WSP_Cloud_Computing.pdf
Saturday 1 December 12WSP Environmental & NRDC report on cloud says cloud can reduce emissions - goodHowever:Lots of assumptionsNo real data
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Garret FitzGerald 1926-2011
Saturday 1 December 12Unlikely politician - highly intelligent academic, unimpeachable integrity, head in the clouds(!)
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Garret FitzGerald
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/caribb/5391899550/
Saturday 1 December 12Before 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/
Saturday 1 December 12KGB 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/
Saturday 1 December 12Something I have been blogging about for quite a while
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Problem
http://greenmonk.net/2012/01/09/is-cloud-computing-green/
Saturday 1 December 12And 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
Saturday 1 December 12Data 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
Saturday 1 December 12NYT 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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Photo http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=193287527693&aid=183026
Saturday 1 December 12A 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
Saturday 1 December 1258% 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/
Saturday 1 December 12MicrosoftAmazonGoogleIBMSunGardDigital 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
Saturday 1 December 12
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Emissions
https://restats.decc.gov.uk/cms/national-renewables-statistics/
UK sources >90% of its electricity from fossil fuels
Saturday 1 December 12“Renewables contribution to UK electricity generation was 9.4% in 2011”
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Emissions
http://www.pacificorp.com/es/mining.html
Saturday 1 December 12The carbon intensity of a data center’s electricity is more important than it’s efficiency!
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Cloud providers
Saturday 1 December 12Partial list of cloud companies
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Clean cloud providers
Saturday 1 December 12Rackspace’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
Saturday 1 December 12Greenqloud are based in Iceland where elec is 100% renewable
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Clean cloud providers
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/
Saturday 1 December 12Amazon claim 0 carbon for two of their regions
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Clean cloud providers
https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/251306461836222464
Saturday 1 December 12 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
Saturday 1 December 12Partial list of cloud companies
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Cloud emissions data providers
http://www.sapsustainabilityreport.com/greenhouse-gas-footprint
Saturday 1 December 12This is as granular as the data gets!
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Cloud emissions data providers
http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/savings.jsp
Saturday 1 December 12Completely 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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Cloud emissions data providers
http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/impact.jsp
Saturday 1 December 12Reports 2 weeks lateGives data for carbon saved, not carbon emitted
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Cloud emissions data providers
http://my.greenqloud.com
Saturday 1 December 12Also publishing CO2 savings, as opposed to emissions
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Why don’t they?
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/pahudson/7742561802/
Saturday 1 December 12Competitive intelligence
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Why don’t they?
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanmarciniak/2207977707/
Saturday 1 December 12Hide their emissions
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Why don’t they?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwgreen/340528570/
Saturday 1 December 12Lack of reporting standards
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Outcome
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”
Saturday 1 December 12Lack of focus on emissions => increased emissions
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Reminder
A quick recap of 2012 so far...
Saturday 1 December 12
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Recap
Saturday 1 December 12In 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
Saturday 1 December 12One 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
Saturday 1 December 12Serious floods
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http://phys.org/news/2012-11-sea-levels-faster-ipcc.html
Recap
Saturday 1 December 12Sea-levels rising 60% faster than IPCC projections28 November in journal Environmental Research Lettersrate of 3.2mm/year compared to 2mm/year in IPCC report
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-weather-records-idUSBRE8611EL20120702
Recap
Saturday 1 December 12From 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
Saturday 1 December 12Huge 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
Saturday 1 December 12Lack 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
Saturday 1 December 12Minimum 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
Saturday 1 December 12That’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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http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2698&ArticleID=9338&l=en
Recap
Saturday 1 December 12Not factored into emissions accounting or climate models before nowCan lead to infrastructure failureclimate projections indicate substantial loss of permafrost by 2100Positive feedback
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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?
Saturday 1 December 12Here’s where we can help
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Solution?
Saturday 1 December 12
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Solution?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabricio/3549693646/
Saturday 1 December 12Why write patches foropen source cloud platforms?
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Solution?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixieroadrash/3769522479/
Saturday 1 December 12Get the update accepted back into the core
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Solution?
http://www.amee.com/products/
Saturday 1 December 12Companies like AMEE already provide API’s for this kind of info
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Solution?
http://www.eucalyptus.com/about/customers
Saturday 1 December 12And thus distributed with next update
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Solution?
http://www.cloudstack.org/users.html
Saturday 1 December 12And thus distributed with next update
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Solution?
http://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/
Saturday 1 December 12And thus distributed with next update
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btw
https://www.mastodonc.com/dashboard
Saturday 1 December 12The 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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http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/sustainability/publications/low-carbon-economy-index/index.jhtml
Carbon
Saturday 1 December 12PwC - largest of the "Big Four" accountancy firms2012 carbon report found CO2 emissions reductions of 0.8% from 2000-2011To stop Global Warming exceeding 2CNeed to reduce CO2 emissions by 5.1% every year until 2050
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Good News
http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/7202866726/
Saturday 1 December 12Jim Hagemann Snabe - co-CEO of SAPWants SAP to be “a leader in this space”
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Good News
http://solidfire.com/fueled-by-solidfire/cloudsigma/
Saturday 1 December 12Robert Jenkins, CEO of CloudSigma (Swiss based Carbon Neutral cloud co.)Getting ready to implement this
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Good News
http://my.greenqloud.com
Saturday 1 December 12GreenQloud are going to contribute their code to CloudStack in Q2 next year
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Adding emissions metrics & reporting to cloud computing will help reduce emissions.
Question is - is anyone up for it?
Conclusion
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Thanks!Contact information:
Tom RafteryPrincipal Analyst, Energy & Sustainability, RedMonk
[email protected], GreenMonk.net,
Twitter.com/tomraftery+34 677 695 468
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Saturday 1 December 12