Cloud Computing and Energy Use

 

Cloud has arrived to tech world as a storm. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Dell all have jumped on the bandwagon. Cloud music, cloud office and cloud storage everything is available on click of a button. Most of these services are offering free 2 GB to 10 GB of data storage. Google has gone one step further and launched the Chrome OS based computer which will store everything in the cloud. Companies are adding massive amount of server space everyday. Companies like Intel, EMC are manufacturing even more chips and storage devices to meet the demand.

Cloud is a good concept but I am worried about the fact that people are not giving up their current machines to move to the cloud. When the prices of storage devices are falling each day it has become affordable to buy 1TB or more of hard drive space. People are having multiple copies, backups of the same data on local machines, portable hard drives and now on the cloud. From my own example, I can say I am using 4 times the amount of storage space I need. It is not a big deal if storage is on a local machine but when you are talking about the cloud it is indeed a big deal.

Amount of energy needed to run these massive servers is enormous. Bad part is that these servers are running 24X7. Each server has 2 synchronized back up servers. So assume you create a 1 MB file on your computer. You take a back up on portable hard drive. You have synced your hard drive with cloud and cloud server itself has 2 back up servers so total storage you are using is 1+1+3= 5MB. When you are not working on these files, your computer and hard disk is not consuming any significant energy but that 3 MB in cloud is still running. It is still consuming power 24X7.

I am not sure how they manage the server energy cost and whether these servers are better in energy conservation than local machines but cloud is certainly creating more carbon footprint for you. Server energy consumption is just one part. Bandwidth needed to work on these files, uploading and downloading the files also takes a lot of energy. Storage in cloud plus the bandwidth needed to process them every time you access is too much for energy needs I guess. But industry is moving to the cloud because it offers many advantages over normal systems. So you have to find energy efficient way to run these servers and deliver the bandwidth. People are not talking too much about these implications and companies are not disclosing what will be environmental impact of their fancy new music in cloud services. Many will be surprised to see how much unnecessary emission these services can cause.

Signing off

Nikhil