Sustainable Software

Reducing the carbon and financial cost of your cloud applications

October 12, 2020 Oct 12, 2020 10/12/20

Paola

In my job as a cloud architect working with large enterprises, there has always been a specific “moment of truth” when the customer realizes that cloud costs are something that needs to be monitored daily to avoid unpleasant surprises with the end of the month’s bill. Enterprises can take several steps toward understanding cloud costs ...

Carbon-Aware Kubernetes

October 5, 2020 Oct 5, 2020 10/5/20

Bill Johnson

If you are running microservices these days there is a high probability you are managing them with Kubernetes. Kubernetes makes container management easy and its websites boasts of “Planet Scale”, “Never Outgrow”, and “Run Anywhere” as some of its key features. As a Sustainable Software Engineer, I read those phrases as more of a ...

How Demand Shifting Compute Accelerates Our Energy Transition to Renewables

October 1, 2020 Oct 1, 2020 10/1/20

Conor Kelly

The world has been busy building renewable energy these last few years. Since the costs of solar and wind energy have dropped below the costs of operating existing fossil fuel plants, particularly coal, wind, and solar have grown to contribute significant portions of electricity consumption globally. These renewable energy sources create ...

How to measure the power consumption of your backend service

September 21, 2020 Sep 21, 2020 09/21/20

Sara Bergman

The second principle of Sustainable Software Engineering is to build energy efficient applications. The very first steppingstone in that direction is to measure the energy your application consumes. This post will answer the question "what is the best way to measure the energy consumption of your backend service?".

Measuring Your Application Power and Carbon Impact (Part 1)

September 14, 2020 Sep 14, 2020 09/14/20

Scott Chamberlin

Overview of using the built in Energy Estimation Engine to estimate the carbon impact of your application.

Network Optimization for Sustainable Software Engineering

September 7, 2020 Sep 7, 2020 09/7/20

Alex Bitiukov

Designing network infrastructure upfront can reduce customer’s carbon footprint as well as the carbon footprint of their cloud provider. This also represents a paradigm shift in how cloud services are designed, planned, and deployed. Just like designing with accessibility in mind became a common software development life cycle.

Do you want to be powered-by renewables? The answer is no.

August 31, 2020 Aug 31, 2020 08/31/20

Asim Hussain

Does a 100% supply of renewable energy make computing guilt-free? The answer depends on if you are being powered-by or matched-by renewables and is always "no".

Balancing the Three Areas of Sustainability Engineering

August 24, 2020 Aug 24, 2020 08/24/20

Bill Johnson

Sustainability in Software Engineering Software engineering has evolved over the years as new capabilities are discovered and new information introduced. Software developers and operations engineers were typically seen as two very separate roles. Once the cloud began to commoditize hardware these roles began to blend together into a new ...

Two philosophies of Sustainable Software Engineering

August 17, 2020 Aug 17, 2020 08/17/20

Asim Hussain

Alongside the 8 principles of Sustainable Software Engineering, there are 2 philosophies. For many of us, sustainability is more than a task. It's a purpose and a movement. Where does Sustainable Software Engineering sit in that broader sustainability movement?

Introducing Software Sustainability

August 6, 2020 Aug 6, 2020 08/6/20

Scott Chamberlin

Our goal for this blog is to provide a set of resources as well as a community for developers wanting to make an impact. The content will cover a broad range of topics but will be entirely about decreasing the amount of carbon, waste, or water wasted directly or indirectly as related to software.