Use Managed Services

Leveraging managed services enables organizations to enhance operational efficiency and minimize their environmental footprint. By entrusting cloud providers to manage infrastructure, teams can focus on developing applications while optimizing resource utilization, thereby supporting sustainability objectives.

Best Practices

• Optimize Resource Allocation: Utilize managed services that dynamically allocate resources based on demand. This prevents over-provisioning of hardware and leads to reduced energy consumption. Implement auto-scaling for workloads to ensure they only use the resources they need at any given time.
• Choose Serverless Architectures: Incorporate serverless computing where possible. Serverless architectures automatically manage the infrastructure, scaling applications only when needed. This helps to minimize energy usage and lowers the carbon footprint associated with idle resources.
• Utilize Multi-Tenancy Features: Choose managed services that support multi-tenancy. By sharing infrastructure among multiple customers, these services maximize hardware utilization, leading to lower overall energy consumption and reduced environmental impact.

Supporting Questions

• Are you utilizing managed services to its fullest potential for optimizing resource usage?

Roles and Responsibilities

• Cloud Architect: Responsible for evaluating and selecting appropriate managed services that align with sustainability goals while ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.
• Sustainability Officer: Oversees the implementation of sustainability strategies in IT, ensuring that managed services are contributing positively towards achieving organizational sustainability objectives.

Artifacts

• Managed Services Evaluation Template: A document that provides criteria for assessing the suitability of various managed services based on operational efficiency and sustainability metrics.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS Lambda: A serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages underlying compute resources, reducing energy waste and costs.
• Amazon RDS: A managed database service that automates backups, scaling, and patching, enabling more efficient resource utilization and reducing the need for excess hardware.
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: A platform as a service (PaaS) that simplifies application deployment and management while optimizing the underlying resources based on the application needs.

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