Building Green Software Part 4: Operational Efficiency • Anne Currie
Jan 12, 2024
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Building Green Software Part 4: Operational Efficiency features Anne Currie, Co-Author of Building Green Software and Leadership Team at Green Software Foundation. This podcast explores the importance of operational efficiency in reducing carbon emissions and electricity usage in software applications. It discusses the progression from DevOps to SRE and introduces the concept of Green Ops, highlighting cost-saving, security, and productivity benefits. The episode also delves into operational efficiency in data centers, techniques for identifying machines that can be turned off, and the significance of operational efficiency in building environmentally-friendly software.
Operational efficiency is crucial for achieving green software goals and can result in a 10x improvement in carbon emissions reduction.
Light switch ops, such as turning off underused machines and automating the process, allows for efficient resource utilization and reduced waste.
Deep dives
Operational Efficiency: The Key to Green Software
Operational efficiency is identified as the most important chapter in the book 'Building Green Software' due to its urgency, importance, and commoditization. While code efficiency can yield significant improvements in performance, operational efficiency offers a more immediate and effective solution to reduce carbon emissions. By utilizing good operational techniques, such as turning off underused machines, increasing multi-tenancy, and right sizing, it is possible to achieve a 10x improvement in carbon emissions reduction. Operational efficiency is characterized by its close alignment with existing practices and readily available solutions, making it an accessible and essential focus for achieving green software goals.
Light Switch Ops: Turning off Unused Machines
Light switch ops addresses the problem of keeping unused or underused machines turned on, leading to unnecessary resource waste. By implementing techniques like the screen test (turning off machines and assessing if anyone notices) and provisioning resources for six months (if not requested again, it is likely unnecessary), unused machines can be identified and safely turned off. Automating the process through light switch ops allows for the efficient use of resources, particularly during non-peak hours or for testing and development environments.
DevOps and Right Sizing for Efficient Operations
DevOps plays a crucial role in operational efficiency by focusing on right sizing, auto-scaling, and removing over-provisioning. By aligning application workloads with appropriate instance types and employing technologies like spot instances and serverless computing, resource utilization can be optimized. Right sizing and seamless scaling enable cost savings, improved security, and reduced environmental impact. Adopting SRE (site reliability engineering) principles, which emphasize automation and monitoring, helps achieve peak operational performance and further enhances green operational practices.
DESCRIPTION How will software development and operations have to change to meet the sustainability and green needs of the planet? And what does that imply for development organizations? In this eye-opening book, sustainable software advocates Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, and Sara Bergman provide a unique overview of this topic—discussing everything from the likely evolution of national grids to the effect those changes will have on the day-to-day lives of developers.
Ideal for everyone from new developers to CTOs, Building Green Software tackles the challenges involved and shows you how to build, host, and operate code in a way that's not only better for the planet, but also cheaper and relatively low-risk for your business. Most hyperscale public cloud providers have already committed to net-zero IT operations by 2030. This book shows you how to get on board.
You'll explore: • How the energy transition is likely to change hosting on prem and in the cloud—and how your company can prepare • The fundamental architectural principles of sustainable software development and how to apply them • How to determine which parts of your system need to change • The concept of extending hardware longevity and the part that software plays