Slides from my talk at Strata London 2012. How to Save the World from Big Data: Tactics for Making Cloud Computing Massively Greener

1. How to save the world
from big data
Tactics for making cloud computing
massively greener
Francine Bennett (@fhr)
Mastodon C

4. Run anywhere
batch jobs
latency insensitive
standard hardware

5. Them: “While this sounds like an interesting
project, I'm afraid we don't make these
sorts of data points available.”
Me: “OK, no problem. Is there any public
industry data which you regard as high
quality, which you would recommend if we're
making estimates? Also would be great to
know if [Company] has any green initiatives
which we should be aware of in our
modelling.”
Them: “None that I'm aware of, but we
continually and relentlessly seek even more
efficient operations.”

6. Electricity source
Emissions factor
Data centre
Power Usage
Effectiveness
Server
Standard power
consumption

8. Electricity source
Emissions factor
Data centre Physical building and layout
Power Usage Occupancy level
Effectiveness (PUE) External temperature & humidity
Hardware
Standard power
consumption

9. Kg CO2e per KWh of national grid electricity
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0
Sweden
UK
China
Switzerland
US (average)
Australia
Iceland
Source: Defra via Amee

10. Physical design
Utilisation
Local climate
Power source

11. Physical design 1.6
Utilisation
Local climate
Power source

12. Physical design 1.6
Utilisation 1.2
Local climate
Power source

13. Physical design 1.6
Utilisation 1.2
Local climate 2.0
Power source

14. Physical design 1.6
Utilisation 1.2
Local climate 2.0
Power source 8.0

15. Occupancy
6%
Physical design
13%
Power source Climate
61% 20%

16. 0
0.15
0.30
0.45
0.60
Iceland
Oregon
London
Winter
Dublin
Virginia
Texas
Iceland
Oregon
London
Summer
Dublin
Virginia
Footprint of one server hour
Texas

17. Myth 1:
efficient == green

18. © 2006 Bruno & Lígia Rodrigues

19. pic of geothermal
© ThinkGeoEnergy

20. Myth 2:
efficiency
improvements
solve it

21. William Stanley Jevons

23. Tell
your
suppliers

24. Demand
and
share data

26. © 2006 Bruno & Lígia Rodrigues

27. © ThinkGeoEnergy

28. Thank you.
Francine Bennett (@fhr)
Mastodon C
Big Data Done Better