IT WOULD SEEM THAT cloud computing is inherently energy-efficient—ater all, the less equipment used, the less power consumed, right? However, as with most questions that seem to have simple answers, the reality is a bit thornier.
The Potential Exists
The most accurate answer to the question “Is cloud computing energy-efficient?” seems to be: Well, it can be. According to Todd Steinmetz, owner of Compurity, there are massive server farms all over the world that use tremendous amounts of electricity—Google, for example, has large server farms located all over the world that consume as much energy as a small town.
However, he says, most cloud computing systems are nowhere near such a massive scale, and many have the potential to deliver energy efficiency. “There is server technology available that is 25% the size of a normal server rack and consumes 25% less electricity,” he says.
The cloud computing trend has brought up concerns by environmental groups due to the massive amounts of power needed to run. And indeed, a 2010 study by the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, found that certain types of cloud computing are not very energy-efficient at all. Using the cloud for data storage is the most energy-eficient use of the technology, the Melbourne study found, because at low usage levels, there’s little energy spent on data transport and most of the power consumption goes to storage.
Users should also be aware that how energy-efficient a cloud service is might depend on what type of service it is—storage, software, or processing—as well as whether it’s on a private system or a public cloud hosted on the Internet.
Finding Efficiencies
While data centers that house cloud computing infrastructure do require a large amount of electricity to run systems and provide cooling, there are efficiencies to be found, such as consolidation of services, according to Eitan Bremler, product marketing manager for virtualization at Radware (www.radware.com).
“In our experience, cloud service providers are cost-driven and are incented to reduce electrical consumption from infrastructure and cooling costs,” he says. “Therefore, technologies that can provide more with less, like infrastructure virtualization, can help [keep energy costs down].”
Data centers wi th cloud buy- in can reduce their energy footprint in numerous ways, including migrating applications and workloads to the c loud. In doing so, enterprises and data centers directly reduce their energy footprint: Because fewer servers are now needed, this means fewer power and cooling requirements, Bremler says.
“ IT managers should calculate how much energy, power, and cooling they can save by moving to the cloud, in terms of server, networking, and ADC hardware,” he says. “They should do this while taking into account the huge change in the way they will manage their data center once migration to the cloud has taken place.”