Sustainability in Software Engineering - How to make a difference

Transcript

1. ©2021 VMware, Inc. Sustainability in Software Engineering How to make a difference Martin Lippert Spring Tools Lead, VMware April 2021
2. 2 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Climate change is real. There is no need to argue about whether climate change exists, is human made, or life-threatening – all this is real and urgent. We need to stop climate change, not discuss whether it is real or not.
3. 3 ©2021 VMware, Inc. This is a huge challenge, and we can make a huge difference. Software is eating the world and can have a huge impact. Let’s not wait for others to solve the problem. Everybody is involved – we all share the same responsibility.
4. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 4 Contributions to climate change Greenhouse gases: • CO2: 74.36% (carbon) • CH4: 17.32% • N20: 6.19% • F-Gas: 2.13%
5. We need to decarbonize the entire world of software engineering.
6. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 6 Employee Commute Energy Production Business Travel Food in the office Hardware Hardware Production Heating / Cooling Data Center Operation Network Traffic CPU Cycles Memory Consumption SWAG production Shipping / Transport Energy consumption There is a wide range of topics
7. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 7 89% 7% 4% Energy - 89% Land-use - 7% Industrial processes - 4% What causes carbon emissions?
8. 8 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Energy Production
9. The energy question. We need 100% renewable energy. This will take a very long time. And we don‘t have a very long time.
10. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 10 Increase renewable energy production Decrease energy consumption We need to tackle this from both sides
11. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 11 Electricity Generation Losses: 60% 40 Watts Data Center Losses: 30% Server Losses: 80% 28 Watts 100 Watts <5 Watts Useful Computing Source: Rocky Mountain Institute Impact of saving energy
12. 12 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Energy Consumption
13. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 13 Employee Commute Energy Production Business Travel Food in the office Hardware Hardware Production Heating / Cooling Data Center Operation Network Traffic CPU Cycles Memory Consumption SWAG production Shipping / Transport Energy consumption Energy consumption
14. 14 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Rule of thumb: Try to run your software with less hardware.
15. 15 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Step 0: Virtualize to use less hardware.
16. • Hardware production consumes lots of energy and resources. • Buying less hardware is cheaper and better for the environment.
17. 17 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Step 1: Do not run your software.
18. • Only run software when necessary (scale to zero). • Eliminate “zombies”. They consume energy, space, and hardware.
19. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 19 1. In 2019, VMware consolidated a datacenter in Singapore. 66% of the host machines were “zombies“. They were decomissioned. 2. In a 2017 study, Jon Kooney surveyed 16,000 non- virtualized and virtualized physical servers, across 10 datacenters. He concluded that 25% of the physical servers were “zombies“ and 30% of the virtual machines were “zombies“. Two pieces of evidence
20. 20 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Step 2: Run your software using less energy.
21. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 21 Memory constantly consumes energy • 1GB RAM consumes about 2W (varying)* CPUs consume a lot of energy • Lets assume an average of 50W* Rule of thumb • Reserve less memory • Reserve less vCPUs (* average rough number, varies depending on type of RAM, power vs. idle mode, and other factors)
22. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 22 A real win-win situation Fight climate change AND reduce cost of operation
23. To put that into perspective One flight from FRA -> SFO, Economy, 747-8 ~640 kgCO2 Dell PowerEdge R560, 32GB, 2 CPUs, x4 300 GB HDD ~1930 kgCO2 / year
24. 29 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Where to run the software?
25. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 32 Choose data center in cold regions (less cooling needed) Choose data center where the energy mix is best (depending on solar/wind conditions) Dynamically reschedule when conditions change
26. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 33 Small scale: Kubernetes
27. 41 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Last Resort Offsetting emissions A topic of its own
28. ©2021 VMware, Inc. 42 Offsetting is generally a good idea • Offsetting projects generally do good things • Choose the project wisely, not every offsetting project really pays off The important difference is: • Avoid emissions in the future (many offsetting projects are in this category) • Vs. Actively removing the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere
29. 48 ©2021 VMware, Inc. “Sustainability is the next frontier in innovation” Nicola Acutt, VMware Sustainability Lead
30. 49 ©2021 VMware, Inc. Learn more: Course by Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/sustainable- software-engineering-overview/ Principles for sustainable software engineering https://principles.green
31. ©2021 VMware, Inc. Thank You Martin Lippert @martinlippert lippertm@vmware.com