Keep your workload up-to-date

Keeping workloads up-to-date is critical for minimizing environmental impact. Regular updates ensure the adoption of efficient features, resolution of known issues, and enhancement of overall performance, thus contributing to sustainability goals by supporting energy-efficient operations.

Best Practices

Regularly Update and Optimize Workloads

• Implement a schedule for regular updates to your workloads to ensure that you are using the latest features and improvements from AWS. This is critical for maintaining efficiency and reducing resource waste, which directly supports sustainability goals.
• Utilize AWS services like AWS Systems Manager to automate patch management and updates. Automation reduces manual errors and ensures that updates are applied in a timely manner, thus optimizing resource usage.
• Conduct periodic reviews of your workloads to identify opportunities for refactoring or re-architecturing based on newer AWS offerings. This proactive approach helps in leveraging more efficient services, reducing operational overhead and environmental impact.
• Ensure that your development and testing environments are using the same or a similar configuration as production. This can help reduce discrepancies and inefficiencies, leading to a more sustainable operational model.
• Monitor your workloads using AWS CloudWatch or other monitoring tools to identify performance bottlenecks and areas for optimization. By continuously improving performance, you can reduce the computing resources required, thereby minimizing your carbon footprint.

Questions to ask your team

• How frequently do you review and update your workloads to utilize the latest features?
• What processes do you have in place to monitor for updates and improvements in your technology stack?
• How do you measure the impact of keeping your workloads up-to-date on your sustainability goals?
• Can you provide examples of recent updates that have improved the efficiency of your workloads?
• Do you have a dedicated team responsible for assessing and implementing updates that enhance sustainability?
• How is feedback from your team incorporated into the decision-making process for updates?
• What challenges have you encountered in keeping workloads up-to-date, and how have you addressed them?

Who should be doing this?

Cloud Architect

• Evaluate and implement updates to workloads that enhance efficiency.
• Design architectures that optimize resource consumption and reduce carbon footprint.
• Ensure alignment of workloads with sustainability best practices.

DevOps Engineer

• Automate the deployment process to ensure updates are applied consistently and swiftly.
• Monitor and analyze workload performance to identify areas for improvement.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines that incorporate sustainability checks at each stage.

Product Manager

• Define and prioritize features that support sustainability goals in product roadmaps.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to communicate sustainability impacts of product changes.
• Measure and report on the sustainability outcomes of product features.

Quality Assurance Engineer

• Develop testing strategies to assess the efficiency of workload updates.
• Ensure that new features maintain or improve sustainability standards.
• Collaborate with development teams to incorporate sustainability criteria in acceptance testing.

IT Operations Manager

• Oversee the management of workloads and ensure they are maintained up-to-date.
• Facilitate training sessions for teams on sustainability practices and updates.
• Coordinate with cloud providers to leverage features that enhance sustainability performance.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Sustainability Improvement Plan Template: A template designed to outline specific initiatives and actions organizations can take to enhance the sustainability of their workloads. It includes sections for identifying current practices, setting sustainability goals, and tracking progress.
• Workload Efficiency Dashboard: An interactive dashboard that visualizes the efficiency metrics of workloads over time. It provides insights on resource usage, cost trends, and sustainability performance indicators to help organizations monitor and improve their impact.
• Development and Deployment Best Practices Guide: A comprehensive guide that outlines best practices for developing, testing, and deploying applications with a focus on sustainability. It provides practical advice on keeping workloads up-to-date and optimizing resource utilization.
• Sustainability Policy Framework: A framework document that articulates an organization’s commitment to sustainability. It includes policies on regular updates of workloads, energy efficiency measures, and sustainable development practices.
• Checklists for Sustainable Development Practices: A checklist that development teams can use to ensure that their processes align with sustainability goals. It includes items related to keeping software up-to-date, minimizing resource waste, and leveraging efficient features.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code in response to events, automatically scaling based on demand. This can help reduce your carbon footprint by optimizing resource usage.
• AWS Cost Explorer: AWS Cost Explorer helps you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time, allowing you to identify areas for improvement in efficiency and sustainability.
• AWS Trusted Advisor: AWS Trusted Advisor provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following best practices for performance, security, and cost optimization, which can contribute to sustainability goals.

Azure

• Azure Advisor: Azure Advisor provides personalized best practices recommendations to improve your Azure resources for high availability, security, performance, and cost, helping to align with sustainability goals.
• Azure Monitor: Azure Monitor helps you understand the performance and health of your applications and services and make informed decisions regarding efficiency and resource optimization.
• Azure Functions: Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that enables you to run event-driven code without having to manage infrastructure, thus contributing to optimized resource usage.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Functions: Google Cloud Functions is a serverless execution environment that allows you to run your code without provisioning or managing servers, promoting efficiency and sustainability.
• Google Cloud Billing Reports: Google Cloud Billing Reports enable you to analyze your spending and identify areas for cost savings, which can directly impact sustainability initiatives.
• Google Cloud Operations Suite: Google Cloud Operations Suite provides monitoring, logging, and diagnostics to improve application performance and optimize infrastructure, supporting sustainability goals.

Question: How do your organizational processes support your sustainability goals?
Pillar: Sustainability (Code: SUS)