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

• tom@redmonk.com

• +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

Saturday 1 December 12

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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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Facebook

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%”

Saturday 1 December 12

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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

Saturday 1 December 12

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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?

Saturday 1 December 12

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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

Saturday 1 December 12

Thanks!Contact information:

Tom RafteryPrincipal Analyst, Energy & Sustainability, RedMonk

Tom@redmonk.com, GreenMonk.net,

Twitter.com/tomraftery+34 677 695 468

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Saturday 1 December 12