Use the minimum amount of hardware to meet your needs

Minimizing hardware usage is critical for reducing environmental impact. By selecting only the necessary hardware and cloud services, organizations can decrease resource consumption, lower carbon footprints, and align with sustainability objectives. Efficient hardware management can contribute significantly to an organization’s ecological footprint and operational costs.

Best Practices

Right-Sizing Instances

• Analyze the resource usage of your workloads to determine the appropriate size of instances. This helps minimize over-provisioning and ensures you are using only the hardware necessary for your needs.
• Utilize AWS tools such as AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Compute Optimizer to gain insights into instance utilization and to identify opportunities for right-sizing.
• Regularly review your instance types and configurations as workloads change to avoid unnecessary resource consumption.

Auto Scaling

• Implement Auto Scaling to dynamically adjust the number of instances based on demand. This prevents over-provisioning during low traffic periods and minimizes energy consumption.
• Use AWS Auto Scaling groups to manage scaling policies effectively, ensuring that instances are automatically added or removed based on predefined conditions.

Use Managed Services

• Consider leveraging AWS managed services (like AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, or Amazon S3) that automatically handle scaling, patching, and optimization, allowing you to focus on your application rather than infrastructure.
• Managed services typically optimize resource use behind the scenes, helping reduce your hardware footprint and associated environmental impact.

Leverage Serverless Architectures

• Adopt serverless computing where possible, which allows you to run applications without provisioning or managing servers. This can significantly reduce your carbon footprint by eliminating idle resources.
• Services like AWS Lambda only consume resources when executing code, leading to efficient hardware usage aligned with demand.

Consolidate Workloads

• Where feasible, consolidate workloads onto fewer, more powerful instances to maximize resource utilization and reduce hardware needs.
• Use virtual machines or container orchestration (like AWS ECS or EKS) to deploy multiple applications on fewer physical servers.

Questions to ask your team

• Have you assessed the resource requirements of your application to determine the optimal amount of hardware needed?
• Are you regularly monitoring and reviewing your workload to identify any underutilized resources?
• Have you considered using serverless architectures or managed services to reduce the hardware footprint?
• Are you leveraging auto-scaling capabilities to match the hardware resources to workload demands dynamically?
• Do you evaluate the performance and efficiency of cloud services before selecting them for your architecture?

Who should be doing this?

Cloud Architect

• Design cloud architectures that prioritize minimal hardware usage.
• Evaluate and select efficient cloud services and hardware according to workload requirements.
• Conduct regular assessments of workload performance to identify optimization opportunities.

DevOps Engineer

• Implement automation tools that streamline the provisioning of cloud resources.
• Monitor resource utilization and adjust configurations to minimize hardware waste.
• Collaborate with development teams to ensure they are using the least amount of resources necessary.

Sustainability Lead

• Define sustainability metrics and goals for cloud operations.
• Provide guidance and best practices on sustainable hardware and service selection.
• Coordinate with other teams to promote awareness and education on sustainable practices.

Capacity Planner

• Analyze workload demand and predict future resource needs to avoid over-provisioning.
• Assist in planning for resource scaling that aligns with sustainability objectives.
• Review utilization reports to determine opportunities for reducing hardware and resource footprint.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Sustainability Hardware Selection Template: A template that guides teams in assessing and selecting the most efficient cloud hardware based on workload requirements and sustainability goals, ensuring only the necessary resources are provisioned.
• Sustainability Impact Assessment Report: A report that evaluates the current hardware usage against sustainability metrics and outlines recommendations for minimizing hardware footprint while maintaining performance.
• Cloud Resource Optimization Checklist: A checklist for teams to follow when designing and implementing cloud architectures, ensuring they consider sustainability by using the minimum necessary hardware and services.
• Sustainability Strategy Guide: A comprehensive guide that defines best practices for hardware and service selection within cloud architectures focused on achieving organizational sustainability goals.
• Resource Utilization Dashboard: An interactive dashboard that monitors resource usage and efficiency, helping teams visualize and track their hardware usage against sustainability targets and identify areas for reduction.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS Compute Optimizer: Analyzes your AWS resources and recommends optimal configurations to reduce costs and improve performance while minimizing unnecessary hardware usage.
• Amazon EC2 Spot Instances: Provides flexible and cost-effective compute options by utilizing unused EC2 capacity, allowing you to run workloads without over-provisioning hardware.
• AWS Lambda: Enables you to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers, thus minimizing on-demand hardware requirements.

Azure

• Azure Advisor: Provides personalized best practices and recommendations to help optimize your Azure resources for efficiency and reduced environmental impact.
• Azure Functions: Allows you to run small pieces of code without the need for explicit server management, effectively minimizing resource provisioning.
• Azure Batch: Allows you to efficiently process large volumes of data using virtual machines and automatically adjusts the number based on workload requirements, reducing unnecessary hardware provisioning.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Compute Engine: Provides flexible virtual machine configurations that you can optimize based on your workload requirements, which helps in minimizing excess hardware usage.
• Google Cloud Functions: Enables event-driven serverless computing that allows you to execute code without provisioning or managing servers, thus supporting efficient resource usage.
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): Allows for efficient workload deployment on a managed Kubernetes service, helping to optimize resource allocation and reduce hardware waste.

Question: How do you select and use cloud hardware and services in your architecture to support your sustainability goals?
Pillar: Sustainability (Code: SUS)