Posts Tagged ‘GreenTech’
[DevoxxGR2024] Devoxx Greece 2024 Sustainability Chronicles: Innovate Through Green Technology With Kepler and KEDA
At Devoxx Greece 2024, Katie Gamanji, a senior field engineer at Apple and a technical oversight committee member for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), delivered a compelling presentation on advancing environmental sustainability within the cloud-native ecosystem. With Kubernetes celebrating its tenth anniversary, Katie emphasized the urgent need for technologists to integrate green practices into their infrastructure strategies. Her talk explored how tools like Kepler and KEDA’s carbon-aware operator enable practitioners to measure and mitigate carbon emissions, while fostering a vibrant, inclusive community to drive these efforts forward. Drawing from her extensive experience and leadership in the CNCF, Katie provided a roadmap for aligning technological innovation with climate responsibility.
The Imperative of Cloud Sustainability
Katie began by underscoring the critical role of sustainability in the tech sector, particularly given the industry’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. She highlighted that the tech sector accounts for 1.4% of global emissions, a figure that could soar to 10% within a decade without intervention. However, by leveraging renewable energy, emissions could be reduced by up to 80%. International agreements like COP21 and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have spurred national regulations, compelling organizations to assess and report their carbon footprints. Major cloud providers, such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), have set ambitious net-zero targets, with GCP already operating on renewable energy since 2022. Yet, Katie stressed that sustainability cannot be outsourced solely to cloud providers; organizations must embed these principles internally.
The emergence of “GreenOps,” inspired by FinOps, encapsulates the processes, tools, and cultural shifts needed to achieve digital sustainability. By optimizing infrastructure—through strategies like using spot instances or serverless architectures—organizations can reduce both costs and emissions. Katie introduced a four-phase strategy proposed by the FinOps Foundation’s Environmental Sustainability Working Group: awareness, discovery, roadmap, and execution. This framework encourages organizations to educate stakeholders, benchmark emissions, implement automated tools, and iteratively pursue ambitious sustainability goals.
Measuring Emissions with Kepler
To address emissions within Kubernetes clusters, Katie introduced Kepler, a CNCF sandbox project developed by Red Hat and IBM. Kepler, a Kubernetes Efficient Power Level Exporter, utilizes eBPF to probe system statistics and export power consumption metrics to Prometheus for visualization in tools like Grafana. Deployed as a daemon set, Kepler collects node- and container-level metrics, focusing on power usage and resource utilization. By tracing CPU performance counters and Linux kernel trace points, it calculates energy consumption in joules, converting this to kilowatt-hours and multiplying by region-specific emission factors for gases like coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
Katie demonstrated Kepler’s practical application using a Grafana dashboard, which displayed emissions per gas and allowed granular analysis by container, day, or namespace. This visibility enables organizations to identify high-emission components, such as during traffic spikes, and optimize accordingly. As a sandbox project, Kepler is gaining momentum, and Katie encouraged attendees to explore it, provide feedback, or contribute to its development, reinforcing its potential to establish a baseline for carbon accounting in cloud-native environments.
Scaling Sustainably with KEDA’s Carbon-Aware Operator
Complementing Kepler’s observational capabilities, Katie introduced KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaler), a graduated CNCF project, and its carbon-aware operator. KEDA, created by Microsoft and Red Hat, scales applications based on external events, offering a rich catalog of triggers. The carbon-aware operator optimizes emissions by scaling applications according to carbon intensity—grams of CO2 equivalent emitted per kilowatt-hour consumed. In scenarios where infrastructure is powered by renewable sources like solar or wind, carbon intensity approaches zero, allowing for maximum application replicas. Conversely, high carbon intensity, such as from coal-based energy, prompts scaling down to minimize emissions.
Katie illustrated this with a custom resource definition (CRD) that configures scaling behavior based on carbon intensity forecasts from providers like WattTime or Electricity Maps. In her demo, a Grafana dashboard showed an application scaling from 15 replicas at a carbon intensity of 530 to a single replica at 580, dynamically responding to grid data. This proactive approach ensures sustainability is embedded in scheduling decisions, aligning resource usage with environmental impact.
Nurturing a Sustainable Community
Beyond technology, Katie emphasized the pivotal role of the Kubernetes community in driving sustainability. Operating on principles of inclusivity, open governance, and transparency, the community fosters innovation through technical advisory groups (TAGs) focused on domains like observability, security, and environmental sustainability. The TAG Environmental Sustainability, established just over a year ago, aims to benchmark emissions across graduated CNCF projects, raising awareness and encouraging greener practices.
To sustain this momentum, Katie highlighted the need for education and upskilling. Resources like the Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) certification and her own Cloud Native Fundamentals course on Udacity lower entry barriers for newcomers. By diversifying technical and governing boards, the community can continue to evolve, ensuring it scales alongside technological advancements. Katie’s vision is a cloud-native ecosystem where innovation and sustainability coexist, supported by a nurturing, inclusive community.
Conclusion
Katie Gamanji’s presentation at Devoxx Greece 2024 was a clarion call for technologists to prioritize environmental sustainability. By leveraging tools like Kepler and KEDA’s carbon-aware operator, practitioners can measure and mitigate emissions within Kubernetes clusters, aligning infrastructure with climate goals. Equally important is the community’s role in fostering education, inclusivity, and collaboration to sustain these efforts. Katie’s insights, grounded in her leadership at Apple and the CNCF, offer a blueprint for innovating through green technology while building a resilient, forward-thinking ecosystem.
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[PHPForumParis2021] Saving the Planet by Doing Less – Hélène Maitre-Marchois
Hélène Maitre-Marchois, a Scrum Master and co-founder of Fairness, delivered a thought-provoking presentation at Forum PHP 2021, urging developers to embrace digital sobriety to reduce the environmental impact of technology. Drawing on her work at Fairness, a cooperative focused on responsible digital solutions, Hélène challenged the audience to rethink feature development and prioritize sustainability. Her talk, blending ecological awareness with practical strategies, inspired developers to make impactful choices. This post explores four key themes: the environmental cost of digital technology, questioning feature necessity, optimizing user experience, and fostering sustainable practices.
The Environmental Cost of Digital Technology
Hélène Maitre-Marchois opened by highlighting the significant environmental footprint of digital technology, noting that it accounts for 3–4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure growing by 8% annually. She emphasized that the internet is not intangible—data centers, networks, and user devices consume vast resources. Hélène referenced studies from GreenIT and The Shift Project, underscoring that user devices, with low recycling rates, contribute heavily to this impact. By framing coding as an energy-intensive activity, she urged developers to consider the ecological consequences of their work, from CPU usage to disk operations.
Questioning Feature Necessity
A core message of Hélène’s talk was the importance of challenging the need for every feature. She advocated for a “why” mindset, questioning whether functionalities truly serve users or merely satisfy client assumptions. Hélène shared examples where client-driven features, like flashy designs, were less valuable than anticipated when tested with users. By prioritizing minimal, purposeful development, developers can reduce resource consumption, aligning with the principles of eco-design that Fairness champions, ensuring applications are both functional and environmentally responsible.
Optimizing User Experience
Hélène stressed that sustainable design enhances user experience without sacrificing aesthetics. She suggested practical measures, such as using dark backgrounds to reduce screen energy consumption, as black pixels require less power than white ones on many displays. By optimizing user journeys and focusing on essential information, developers can create efficient, user-friendly applications. Hélène’s approach, rooted in her Scrum Master experience, emphasizes collaboration with designers and stakeholders to balance usability and sustainability, ensuring applications meet real user needs.
Fostering Sustainable Practices
Concluding her presentation, Hélène encouraged developers to adopt sustainable coding practices, such as optimizing database queries and choosing energy-efficient data formats. She highlighted the role of ethical designers and community initiatives like La Fresque du Numérique in promoting digital sobriety. By integrating these practices, developers can contribute to a cleaner internet, aligning with Fairness’ mission to build a responsible digital ecosystem. Hélène’s call to action inspired attendees to rethink their workflows and prioritize ecological responsibility in their projects.