Building Green Software

Building Green Software

by Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, Sara Bergman
Released July 2024
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098150563

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Book description

How will software development and operations have to change to meet the sustainability and green needs of the planet? And what does that imply for development organizations? In this eye-opening book, sustainable software advocates Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, and Sara Bergman provide a unique overview of this topic—discussing everything from the likely evolution of national grids to the effect those changes will have on the day-to-day lives of developers.

Ideal for everyone from new developers to CTOs, Building Green Software tackles the challenges involved and shows you how to build, host, and operate code in a way that's not only better for the planet, but also cheaper and relatively low-risk for your business. Most hyperscale public cloud providers have already committed to net-zero IT operations by 2030. This book shows you how to get on board.

You'll explore:

  • How the energy transition is likely to change hosting on prem and in the cloud—and how your company can prepare
  • The fundamental architectural principles of sustainable software development and how to apply them
  • How to determine which parts of your system need to change
  • The concept of extending hardware longevity and the part that software plays

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Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. Who Are You?
    2. How Does This Book Work?
    3. Why Do Techies Matter?
    4. The Guilty Culprits
    5. What Won’t We Talk About?
    6. Says Who?
    7. Why Can’t You Trust Us?
  2. 1. Introduction
    1. What Does It Mean to Be Green?
    2. What We Reckon
    3. Chapter 2: The Building Blocks: Carbon, Hardware, and Electricity
    4. Chapter 3: Code Efficiency
      1. The Big Problem with Efficiency
      2. Issue 1: Jevons Paradox
      3. Issue 2: The Productivity Hit
      4. Code Efficiency Is Tricky
      5. Consider the Context
    5. Green by Design
    6. Chapter 4: Operational Efficiency
      1. High Server Density
      2. Run Less
      3. Green Operational Tools and Techniques
      4. Reporting Tools
    7. Chapter 5: Carbon Awareness
    8. Chapter 6: Hardware Efficiency
    9. Chapter 7: Multidisciplinary Aspects
    10. Chapter 8: Measurement
    11. What Next?
  3. 2. Building Blocks
    1. The Reason We Are Here: Carbon
      1. Greenhouse Gasses
      2. Weather Versus Climate
      3. Monitoring Climate Change
    2. Back to Basics: Electricity
      1. Work, Energy, Electricity, and Bills
      2. High and Low-Carbon Energy
      3. How Can We Improve Energy Efficiency?
    3. Hardware 101 for Software Engineers
      1. The Physical Side
      2. The Operation Side
    4. You’re All Set
  4. 3. Efficiency is everything. Or is it?
    1. What is code efficiency for?
      1. Descaling is for kettles
      2. Developer productivity
    2. Hyper efficient code
      1. The goodies
      2. The less good?
      3. Performance vs efficiency vs greeness
    3. Pick the right platform
    4. Use green design patterns
      1. Avoid too many layers
      2. Be mindful with microservices
      3. Leverage client devices
      4. Manage machine learning
    5. The lowdown
  5. 4. Measurement
    1. The Perfect
      1. Perfect Energy Data
      2. Perfect Carbon Intensity Data
      3. Where Do Market Based Reductions Fit In?
      4. Perfect Embodied Carbon Tracing
      5. The Future Of Perfect Monitoring
    2. 8.2 The Good Enough?
      1. Use Of Proxies
      2. Consistent Use Of Imperfect Data To Reach Reductions
    3. 8.3 Examination of the Current Methodologies
      1. Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG protocol)
      2. Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity Specification (SCI)
      3. ISO 14064 Standard
    4. 8.4 Available tooling
      1. Hyperscale Cloud Provider Tools
      2. Open Source Options For Cloud
      3. Client Side Tooling
    5. You Made It!
  6. About the Authors

Product information

  • Title: Building Green Software
  • Author(s): Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, Sara Bergman
  • Release date: July 2024
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098150563