Cloud Technology- A step towards Green computing

Rohit C Shetty and Dr.Veena.A

Profile of Authors: Rohit C Shetty, Student of II semester, MBA Program, PESIT,Bangalore Veena.A, Professor, MBA program, PESIT, Bangalore, Karnataka and can be reached at veenaandini@pes.edu

Address for Communication: Veena.A Professor,MBA program PESIT, 100 ft. Ring Road, Banashankari III stage, Bangalore, Karnataka, India- 560 085 veenaandini@pes.edu

Abstract
The cascading effect of modern business, industry, agriculture and whole living style has made the system unsustainable. The effect of global warming on environment is alarming. In this scenario, it is necessary to make every effort to save this planet from the man-made disaster. Information Technology in general and cloud technology in particular is one of those opportunities to go the green way. In todays business scenario existing businesses as well as new entrepreneurial ventures need flexible and scalable IT infrastructure. Cloud technology with almost infinite scalability and a predictable monthly cost, eliminates the need for large seed investments, minimizes IT infrastructure requirements and reduces the need for IT services (IT professionals). Apart from the obvious business benefits, now, organizations need to understand that cloud computing can help them meet the corporate social responsibilities by minimizing energy consumption and help them embrace green computing. Keywords: Cloud Technology, Green Computing, Power Saving, Carbon Footprint

Introduction
Cloud computing makes use of internet-based services to support business process. It also lets businesses to rent IT-services on a utility-like basis. Cloud computing offers higher scalability, flexibility, quicker startup time, reduced managerial costs and ready availability of resources by compilation of existing techniques and technologies, packaged within a new infrastructure framework. Rapid deployment, low startup costs/ capital investments, costs based on usage, subscription of specific services, multi-lease sharing of services/ resources are some of the most beneficial attributes of cloud computing. Cloud computing is characterized by on selfservice, borderless network access, allocation of independent resource assortments, flexibility, agility and measurability of the service. Cloud computing services can be provided to customers in many different ways. These cloud computing delivery models include Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS)-The service provided to the customer to use the providers applications running on a cloud system. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a simple interface such as a Web browser (e.g., Web-based ERP). The customer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, OSs, storage, or even individual application capabilities, possible exception may be the limited user-specific application configuration settings .Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS)- The service provided to the customer to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure customer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The customer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including computer networks, servers, OSs, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations. Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)- The service provided to the customer for processing, networks, storage, and other fundamental computing resources where the customer is able to deploy and run any software, which can include OSs and applications. The customer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, but, can control the OSs, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components. The four primary cloud Deployment Models are Private cloud - The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for a client company. It may be managed by the company itself or a third party and may exist on the company premises or off the premises. Community cloud - The cloud infrastructure is shared between several entities and supports a specific community that has shared goals (e.g., security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations, projects). It may be managed by the entities or a third party and may exist on premises or off premise. Public cloud-The cloud services are made available to the general public or a large group of industries and is owned by an organization selling cloud services. Hybrid cloud-- The cloud infrastructure framework is made up of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain separate entities but are linked together by standardized or proprietary technologies that enable data and application portability(Michael Hogan et.al).

Summary of cloud services

Source: JayantBaliga Green management strategies are those business strategies that include awareness about environmental issues and then initiating innovative programs that create significance. An understanding of the basic relationship between green management and corporate environmental performance such as green technology activities is very important (JazminSeijas2006). Professional green management measures play a central role in the discussion of non-mandatory approaches to foster corporate activities for the betterment of environment. This paper focuses on cloud technology which is more relevant to the green computing arena. Green Computing is the Study and Practice of designing, creating, using and disposing computing resources with minimal environmental damage(San Murugesan) .The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has published a survey of over 90 government and industry initiatives on "Green I.C.T.s", i.e. information and communication technologies, the environmental and climatic change. The report concludes that initiatives tend to concentrate on the greening ICTs themselves rather than on their actual implementation to tackle global warming and environmental degradation.Cloud technology is a great step towards green computing. Following are some of the steps which can reduce energy consumption in Cloud Computing Data centers: 1. Diagnose opportunities & problems 2. Measure & Manage datacenter energy consumption 3. Cool-blanking panels 4. Virtualize 5. DVS (Dynamic Voltage Scaling) technique 6. Reducing the dynamic energy consumption by lowering the supply voltage at the cost of performance degradation (Recent processors support such ability to adjust the supply voltage dynamically).

Cloud computing particularly helps with server virtualization.Steps mentioned here are according to the IBMs Big Green Approach to Data Centre. Energy efficiency and Virtualization are important green data topics. Many present server CPU utilization rates typically hover between 5% and 15%. Direct-attached storage utilization sits between 20% and 40%, with network storage between 60% and 80%. Virtualization can increase hardware utilization by five to 20 times and allows organizations to reduce the number of power-consuming servers. Cloud computing is the ultimate in virtualization. Examples such as 100$ laptop in US or Aakash Tablet PC launched in India signify the innovations under adverse conditions which are good examples for energy efficient yet cost effective alternatives for expensive and high energy consuming devices. These examples illustrate the viability of small cloud computing farms deployed in small-scale data centers using low power processors like the Intel-Atom, Arm-Cortex and Via-Nano. These central processing units (CPUs), originally designed for use in net books, require only 2 to 10 watts versus 80 to 160 watts for the processors typically used in data center servers. These power efficient processors also have quiescent states that consume little energy, unlike the conventional data center CPU that consumes 50% of its peak energy even while idle(Shri Krishna Iyengar).

Microsoft Researchs organizational division called Cloud Computing Futures (CCF), focused on reducing the operational costs of data centers and increasing their adaptability and to reduce the chances of failure. One of their findings: these processors offer substantial fractions (33 percent to 50 percent) of the performance of the high-performance processors used in Microsoft data centers but consume a disproportionally smaller amount of power (5 percent to 10 percent). Similar studies have been conducted, obtaining the same results, at Carnegie Mellon Universitys FAWN: A Fast Array of Wimpy Nodes, the green scale center for energy efficient computing at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

It may not be practical to switch from the grid to the solar PV system in one go, we may instead initiate the process by installing these systems as a backup system for power outages and then progressively go on replacing the conventional power sources with the more green sources.

The Green Grid Consortium came out with an estimate that even in a well maintained data center, 42 percent of the total power delivered to a traditional data center is consumed by the cooling system and computer room ACs. One innovative approach is eliminating the majority of the heat by using ambient cooling (augmented with spot rack cooling), and running the data center at elevated temperatures. The use of ambient cooling can be traced back for centuries in the Middle East and across Africa, as people from these regions, used the cooler temperatures found underground to provide cooler air tovent structures above the

ground level, as in a thermal chimney. Same concept can be extended to Data Centers (Shri Krishna Iyengar).

Research firm Verdantix estimates that companies off-loading data and services to cloud servers could save $12 billion off their energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 million metric tons within the next ten years. But for the actual greenhouse gas savings to be realized, the companies offering cloud services need to make the right energy choices.

Companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook are beginning to lead the sector down a clean energy pathway through innovations in energy efficiency, prioritizing renewable energy access when constructing their data centres, and demanding better energy options from utilities and government decision-makers, GreenPeace.

Cloud-based services like Gmail allow organizations of all sizes to reap advantages of increased efficiency, reduced overhead costs, and smaller carbon footprint without needing the expertise of an army of software developers, hardware designers and data centre technicians. For a small office of 50 people, using Gmail rather than a locally hosted server can mean an annual per-user power savings of up to 170 kWh and a carbon footprint reduction of up to 100 kg of CO2. Larger organizations showless, though still measurable efficiency gains.

Scope for further discussion

The setup for mobile cloud computing is substantially different from the traditional client-server computing systems. Energy is a quintessential factor for battery powered devices and an important criterion when considering moving computing to the cloud. The basic balance between local and remote computing is defined by the trade-off between communication energy and computing energy (Antti P et al.)

Conclusion
The energy consumption of cloud computing data centers is not only substantially lesser than independent IT infrastructure installations but also can be reduced further by optimization of the data center operations. Cloud technology goes hand in hand with green computing and opens up opportunities not only in business but also in keeping the business green. The use of cl oud computing can be extended to all the

sectors. Small, medium, and large organizations across Manufacturing, service, business and other sectors have huge potential to use Green technology to make computing green.

References 1. Antti P. Miettinen, Jukka K. Nurminen (2010) Energy efficiency of mobile clients in cloud computing, Nokia research centre. Googles Green Computing: Efficiency at Scale , (http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//green/pdfs /google-green-computing.pdf) JayantBaliga, Robert W. A. Ayre, Kerry Hinton, Rodney S. Tucker (2011) ,Green Cloud Computing: Balancing Energy in Processing, Storage, and Transport, proceedings of IEEE vol.99, issue 1, page 149-167. JazminSeijasNogareda and Andreas Ziegler(2006) ,Green Management and Green Technology Exploring the Causal Relationship, CIS Working papers, issue 18 (Centre for Comparative and international studies, Zurich, Switzerland) Michael Hogan, Fang Liu, Annie Sokol, Jin Tong (2011),NIST Cloud Computing Standards Road map, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special publication 500-291. Shri Krishna Iyengar Green Cloud Computing-A data center approach, (http://tinyurl.com/qz5j4ss)

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.