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cloud technology pub discussions:#2 Is The Cloud Greener
Is migrating to the cloud the ecologicalchoice?
Studies and Stats
Greenpeace: a power hungry data centre can consume up to 622.6 billion
kilowatts per hour.
With data centres estimated in 2020 to be getting through more kilowatts hours of
electricity combined than the current joint consumption of France, Germany, Canada
and Brazil.
On the other hand
WSP Environmental: estimates that a 100 person SME using the cloud could reduce
energy consumption and emissions by 90%...
…and by 2020 all US business combined using the cloud can make annual reductions
equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil.
What are the factors?
With the market for green data centres to grow from $17.1Bn in 2012 to $45.4Bn in
2016, what are the green factors?
The energy source
The ecological data centre uses
ecological power sources.
The equipment and devices
Computer energy efficiency appears to be doubling every 18 months. Data centres
which maintain good recycling and replacement cycles for servers, storage and
network equipment are the most power efficient.
Data centre setup
Hardware location: grouping hardware with common environmental requirements
together reduces power needs.
Virtualization: run multiple independent
virtual systems on a single computer. Fewer server means reduced power and reduced
cooling requirements.
Air management reduces power
requirements: minimise the bypassing of
cooling air from the rack intakes; maximiserecirculation of heat exhausts back into rack
intakes.
Setup analysis
Pike Research assessed 5 setups from ‘on
premise’ without virtualisation to good and bad practise public and private cloud setups.
On premise poor setup with no virtualisation
can use 46kg of CO2 per year.
Public cloud setup following best green
practices can use 2kg of CO2 per year.
However, data storage from a poor powered
and inefficiently run public cloud can be less green than a well setup and powered on
premise system.
For a greener cloud
Energy consumption from our expanding
data centre industry must be well managed,with energy efficiency and carbon usage
made a priority.
And, it is up to businesses interested in
their environmental impact to ask for transparency on energy efficiency and carbon
usage from their data centres.
Not even touched on…
… the hidden green benefits from the
socioeconomic impacts of cloud computing and ecommerce.
What do you think? Contact CTO and let us know.
tel: 0044 (0)20 3478 9049
