{"id":3879,"date":"2013-07-11T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=3879"},"modified":"2013-07-11T07:00:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T15:00:20","slug":"cloud-computing-economies-of-scale-make-the-cloud-greener-less-gray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-economies-of-scale-make-the-cloud-greener-less-gray\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Computing: Economies of Scale Make the Cloud Greener (or at least less Gray)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is cloud computing Green? \u00a0Google says ‘yes’.<\/p>\n

Consider three businesses: a small business that runs its own servers to host email for 50 users, a medium-sized business that host its own email with 500 users, and internally hosted email for a large business with 10,000 users. \u00a0 How do these scenarios compare in energy efficiency instead to one where user email accounts are hosted as a cloud service? \u00a0That’s the question recently investigated by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) and Northwestern University. \u00a0The study was sponsored by Google<\/a>.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The study found that the use of cloud computing was far more energy efficient than on-premise computing. \u00a0While both on-premise and the cloud need to allocate servers to run the same applications, economies of scale favor cloud computing. \u00a0More user accounts can be efficiently allocated on a cloud server and cloud servers are also able to share power and cooling resources.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The study assumed that for small and medium-sized businesses to host email on-premise that two servers would need to be allocated: the primary production machine and a second server for backups. \u00a0For the large company, the assumption was that 10 on-premise primary servers and two backup servers would be needed. \u00a0To solve the problem, the researchers came up with a model that explains how to best captures the data, and describes the method and science for measuring and analyzing the data.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
After crunching the numbers, the study estimates that small businesses need to use 175 kWh\/user\/year, medium-sized businesses with a denser packing of user accounts on the on-premise servers need only 28.4 kWh\/user\/year, and large businesses would use 7.6 kWh\/user\/year.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
These estimated numbers compare to numbers actually measured by Google in the running of their Gmail application. \u00a0Gmail’s energy usage clocks in at less than 2.2 kWh\/user\/year. \u00a0They’re able to achieve such a low number by having efficient servers tuned to their email application with a PUE\u00a0\u00a0(Power Usage Effectiveness<\/a>) of 1.16 for their servers.<\/div>\n
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Is cloud computing Green? \u00a0Google says ‘yes’. Consider three businesses: a small business that runs its own servers to host email for 50 users, a medium-sized business that host its own email with 500 users, and internally hosted email for…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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