Case Study on Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing

Abstract

With ever increasing usage of IT infrastructure around the globe, the increase in energy consumption and carbon emission is a worrisome situation for everyone because of its direct effect on environment. The environment is being dangerously impacted by Information Technology infrastructure extensive use and its waste. Cloud computing has emerged as one step further solution to deploy all virtualized IT resources as per need on self-service basis as a rental method for the users. Different cloud deployment methods have emerged according to the need of users, institutions and communities. In last decade virtualization has been a milestone in enabling optimal usage of information technology resources. Cloud computing has provided a platform for deploying everything as a Service in IT, which has changed the economics of IT based business and organizations from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure. For enabling Cloud services we first need to understand our existing infrastructure. In second step we should be able to virtualize it for optimal usage. Then with the help of existing cloud applications we can deliver and deploy information technology as a resource at various levels such as infrastructure, platform, and software. Keywords; cloud computing, carbon emission, energy consumption, IT waste, virtualization. The Advancement in the field of information technology has enabled us to optimize the use of physical infrastructure with the help of virtualization, most of which is only used in specific applications like vitalizing a local area network on switch or vitalizing a compute resource to run more than one operating system on a desktop. The benefits of same has not been completely implemented and utilized in industrial environments where we require a large amount of IT resources. The advantage of using cloud is to enable complete utilization of Information technology resources, where most of the resources are underutilized. The cost involved in maintenance and management of those resources is huge which can be saved due to centralized management of private cloud infrastructure. We create private cloud keeping in mind. • Availability and performance requirements for the cloud • Infrastructure sizing, performance and continual availability requirements • The need for data security or isolation • The appropriate user interface With advent of IT as a service in cloud computing technology energy consumption and related carbon emissions and waste are considerably lesser than in-house implementation. Technology in Cloud Computing creates an able structure for sharing resources with the help of virtualization among many; it greatly decreases or abolishes the need for most products, equipment, utilities and facilities. The results are more sustainable IT infrastructures and processes which help in keeping environment safe. • Highest resource consumption and effectiveness • Reduced energy consumption by up to 95 % with the help of virtualization which optimizes the use of physical infrastructure and thereby helps IT to be delivered as a service. • Displaced utility costs Workstation utility costs are cut by 90% due to change of capital expenditure into operational expenditure in industries or organizations across the world. • Reduced electronic waste as No more batteries and minimal software/hardware waste. • Reduced waste overall due to consumption of computational power as service, no more as infrastructure. • Reduced ecological impact of workstations as compared to thin clients as anything related to computation can be provided as a service on a client connected with internet to the cloud provider.