What is Green Cloud Computing?
The term “green cloud computing,” which has gained popularity in the IT sector, refers to the potential advantages cloud-based services may have for the Environment. The term “green cloud” combines the terms “green,” which has the meaning of environmentally friendly, with “cloud computing,” which refers to the delivery of IT services via the internet. Therefore, green cloud computing delivers IT services via the internet in an environmentally friendly manner.
There are three core objectives of green cloud computing: maximising energy efficiency throughout a device’s lifecycle, promoting recyclable materials, and reducing the usage of hazardous IT components.
The significant attributes of green clouds are energy efficiency, virtualisation, multi-tenancy (high-end utilisable), consolidation, automation, robustness, recyclability, and sustainability of cloud resources.
There are two perspectives of green cloud computing green hardware and green software engineering methodologies.
Green Hardware: This covers servers, network appliances, and storage hardware used in data centres, as well as other information and communications technology (ICT) tools that are environmentally friendly and energy-efficient. It also includes the buildings that contain the cooling equipment, the power supply units, and other related items.
Green software engineering methodologies include all programs that oversee data centres and other cloud-based services. The fundamental goal of green software engineering approaches is to create dependable systems that not only fulfil the needs of enterprises but also use less energy. For instance, developers can make coding and architectural improvements that lower the amount of GHG emissions the applications produce.
How does green cloud computing work?
Cloud service companies use a variety of tactics to build greener data centres. These initiatives aim to increase efficiency in one or more of the following areas:
Energy source
The supplier powers its data centres with as much renewable energy as possible. This frequently consists of wind or solar energy and sizable battery banks to store the gathered energy. Some providers offset their carbon footprint by using renewable energy certificates (RECs), which gives them the right to advertise that their data centres utilise only renewable energy.
Facility
The company makes steps to use energy more effectively in its data centres. For instance, a provider might put a data centre underground, on the ocean floor, or in a frigid climate. The service provider might also devise ways to use the surplus heat produced in the data centres, including warming surrounding structures. Providers may also use machine learning or cutting-edge technology to monitor and optimise energy use. Other tactics include rearranging the floor plan of the data centre to increase airflow or installing cooling water systems to deal with the heat produced by the equipment.
Infrastructure
The provider optimises the hardware and software infrastructure. For instance, a provider might adopt dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) techniques or install less energy gear. The provider may also optimise resource consumption by deploying virtualisation or software-defined infrastructure to decrease the number of servers and storage devices.
Workflow
The provider employs a variety of tactics to improve workflows at every level. This could involve moving workloads to other times of the day, changing programs to lessen network traffic, improving storage and server caches, automating repetitive operations, or implementing various other actions to save energy.
Advantages of Green Cloud Computing
There are numerous benefits of green cloud computing, and below are some of them.
Remote work lessens the environment’s carbon footprint.
The freedom to work remotely, anytime, and anywhere is one of the advantages of green cloud computing in the modern workplace. This flexibility has boosted output, shortening employees’ daily commute to work. Due to reduced commute time, less fuel is used, and less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Organisations have profited from this since it has decreased office energy use and real estate expenditures.
Eliminating paper using cloud computing and green computing
With various forms of green technology and cloud computing, businesses may stop using paper. Today, many people use green mobile computing storage solutions like OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Cloud computing security There is no longer a need to print documents thanks to green technologies like Adobe Sign and DocuSign. Users can quickly sign, store, and transfer contracts and other legal documents with only a few clicks with these green computing tools.
Reduction in E-waste Generation
Every ten years, there is more electronic garbage. The USA discards 24 million computers annually. 14% of computers are discarded or given to charity. The e-waste continues to migrate through a trading chain in poorer nations.
There are also some disadvantages of green cloud computing.
Medium-sized and small businesses believe that green computing requires a high initial expenditure. Everyone still cannot afford green computing.
Adapting to evolving technology will take a lot of work.
Green computing would influence applications that use a lot of power to operate.
Making Cloud more green
Mainly there are three approaches to making green cloud computing environments more environmentally friendly.
The first method is the Dynamic Voltage frequency scaling technique (DVFS). This method will connect every electronic circuit to an operational clock. This clock’s working frequency is altered to regulate the supply voltage. As a result, this strategy depends on the hardware and needs to be adjusted to suit changing requirements. When compared to other methods, the power savings are low. The power savings to cost incurred ratio is also standard.
The second method is resource allocation or virtual machine migration technique. Every physical system in a cloud computing environment houses several virtual machines that the applications operate on. This can move these virtual computers across hosts based on functional needs and resources. The VM migration approach aims to move VMs with the least amount of power increase possible. The VMs are moved over to the nodes that use the least power after being chosen.
The third approach is the Algorithmic approach. According to experimental findings, an optimum server uses around 70% less energy than a fully utilised server.
