Large-scale Distributed Systems and Energy Efficiency: A Holistic View

Chapter 10Toward Sustainability for Large-Scale Computing Systems: Environmental, Economic, and Standardization Aspects

Christina Herzog,¹ Jean-Marc Pierson,¹ and Laurent Lefèvre²

¹IRIT, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

²INRIA, LIP Laboratory, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, University of Lyon, Lyon, France

10.1 Introduction

During the previous chapters of this book, several advances have been demonstrated toward more energy-efficient distributed systems, from networks to data centers and clouds, high-performance computing or peer-to-peer systems. While these works are very important and valuable, we move the focus point slightly in this chapter and present a wider point of view.

Obviously, energy efficiency is only one side of the sustainability issue. All efforts toward energy efficiency do not mean that they all consider Green information technology (IT) as a whole. We want first to define precisely the link between sustainability and Green IT when the actions on computer systems can increase the economical, the societal, or the environmental values, but not necessarily the three aspects together.

Second, we want to outline the differences across the actors involved in the innovation circle in Green IT: their motivations, their approaches, and their outcomes can vary largely and that differences can accelerate or decrease the pace of Green IT adoption.

Recognizing the role of standardization and professional bodies toward greener IT, we examine, mainly in the data ...