Sustainability in migrating workloads to public clouds

Abstract

In recent times, there has been a considerable increase in Cloud-Based applications and infrastructure. This has led to quicker innovations, agile businesses, availability of new services over the internet, improved collaboration, and better security. With the growth of new technologies like blockchain, quantum computing, mobility-focused applications, and edge computing, there has been an increased interest in adopting cloud services. In this paper, we highlight the different sustainability metrics and benefits while migrating workloads from the on-prem data center to the public clouds. Also, the clouds are elastic, scalable, cost-efficient, robust, and overall a better alternative to host the client applications and services. We present how the major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are continuously working on improving their infrastructure for a more energy efficient cloud. But with so many factors like the cost of cloud services, the location of the data center to name a few, it becomes quite a tedious task for the clients to select a cloud service provider when moving from their on-premise data center(s). Hence, we also briefly propose our solution that we are currently working on. The final goal is to have a cross-platform advisory that based on a wide-range of client-based inputs and a rich repository of current energy efficient clouds and their sustainability metrics, aims to provide them a detailed recommendation about their preferred cloud service provider. In case the client does not provide any such preference, the advisory should also recommend an ideal cloud service provider for their particular workload. This suggested action will be able to fulfill the client's constraints as well as provide them an energy efficient cloud along with a sustainability score. This score is indicative of how much improvement in the energy consumed and carbon footprint can be achieved through this migration to the suggested cloud.