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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1203/EES-preface.pdf
Workshop Report:
Energy Efficient Systems
Usman Wajid
University of Manchester
United Kingdom
usman.wajid@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract— The workshop on Energy Efficient Systems (EES), current initiatives targeting energy efficiency and CO2
in its second year, was organized by the EC (FP7) ECO2Clouds emissions in the cloud as well as in the wider ICT domain
project. EES primarily focuses on energy efficiency in ICT Cloud computing gets special attention here because the sheer
systems with the extended scope of systems or technological size of cloud infrastructures and datacentres makes them the
solutions that may be supported by ICTs. The purpose of EES is
biggest stakeholders in the ICT domain. The workshop was
to bring together research and industrial efforts focusing on
achieving energy efficiency and to discuss ways innovative ideas organised by the European Commission (EC) funded
of mutual interest. This year the workshop on EES was collocated ECO2Clouds (Experimental Awareness of CO2 in Federated
with the 2nd International Conference on ICT for Sustainability. Cloud Sourcing) project. ECO2Clouds aims to develop a CO2
This report presents an overview of the workshop, the paper aware solution for the deployment and management of
presented and the discussions that took place during the workloads on cloud infrastructure that can ensure best energy-
workshop. performance ratios. The project particularly focuses on
federated cloud infrastructure where applications may span
Index Terms—energy efficiency, cloud, ECO2Clouds, over different cloud sites making it relatively difficult to track
their energy consumption and CO2 footprint as compared to
I. INTRODUCTION when they are deployed at one cloud site.
Recently energy consumption and environmental This workshop report presents the overview of 5 research
implications of ICT are getting more and more attention with papers presented in the workshop on Energy Efficient Systems
the CO2 footprint of ICT estimated to be touching 4% of EU’s along with the summary of discussions that took place during
total CO2 emissions. This brings ICT in line with the airline the session.
industry in terms of volume of CO2 emissions. The
transparency in measuring ICT’s energy consumption and the II. OVERVIEW OF PAPERS
pursuit for energy efficient technological solutions can enable The papers presented in the workshop on Energy Efficient
users to make informed choices when using digital Systems addressed energy efficiency and CO2 issues in
technologies and consequently deliver huge impact on lowering different areas of ICT with particular focus on cloud
the energy consumption and environmental implications of computing.
using ICT-based solutions. In this respect, there is an ever The paper Eco-efficient Cloud Resource Monitoring and
increasing need for innovative solutions to address the issues Analysis presented an approach for saving energy and reducing
concerning energy consumption and CO2 emissions at different the Carbon footprint of cloud infrastructure. The resource
levels of ICT. Some of the areas where the above issues can be monitoring and analysis approach, implemented in the
addressed include CO2 awareness at application design and ECO2Clouds project, enables specification and collection of
deployment phases, development of energy and CO2 aware specific metrics at physical infrastructure (testbed and hosts)
monitoring tools and mechanisms, energy aware modelling and and virtualization (VM) levels. The metrics currently
management of ICT resources and increased transparency of implemented in ECO2Clouds enable quantification of energy
energy mix that goes into the underlying ICT infrastructure. consumption and Carbon footprint at the above mentioned two
In this background, the Workshop on Energy Efficient levels. The data collected by the monitoring approach is stored
Systems at International Conference on ICT for Sustainability in a database for later use. The paper also provides an overview
(ICT4S) (Stockholm, August 2014) provided participants from of a Data Mining service that uses the stored data to perform
academia and industry an opportunity to present and discuss analytical operations that may help in the application
deployment or resource utilization decision making.
Copyright © Usman Wajid. Copying permitted only for The paper Eco-reports in Clouds provides an overview of a
private and academic purposes. This volume is published and reporting mechanism for cloud computing. The reporting
copyrighted by its editors. mechanism enables presenting to the user the information
about the environmental impact of their cloud applications. The
reporting mechanism also supports the goal of informing users about the target domains and the scope of potential energy
about different operations that may have been performed efficient systems. Target areas for achieving energy efficiency
during the execution of their cloud application to satisfy their were narrowed down to buildings and cloud computing
non-functional requirements and to optimize their energy infrastructure. Due to the growing number of datacentres
consumption and Carbon footprint. maximizing green energy utilization in this area can make a
The paper Load Balancing to Save Energy in Cloud substantial impact both financially and in terms of
Computing introduces two algorithms for efficient resource environmental implications. Also the location and design of
utilization in cloud computing. The algorithms aim to minimize building can impact on the energy consumption of a datacentre
the wastage of cloud resources as a result of under-utilization e.g. reduced cooling overhead of physical servers. Another
of some resources, and minimize lengthy response times as a aspect discussed was the consumer behaviour concerning the
result of over utilization, where both cases contribute towards use of different devises for performing ICT operations e.g.
excess energy consumption by the underlying resources. The from desktops, laptops to tablets and smartphones. Rapid
experimental evaluation of the two algorithms reveals their technological advances mean the lifespan of these devices is
strengths and weaknesses as one might be performing better getting smaller; however their CO2 footprint in terms of R&D,
than the other in any given context. manufacturing, logistics and recycling operations stays the
The paper Energy Efficiency Embedded Service Lifecycle: same. Hence somehow increasing the lifespan of these devices
Towards an Energy Efficient Cloud Computing Architecture can also contribute towards lowering the CO2 footprint in the
argues the need to provide novel methods and tools to support ICT domain. Furthermore, the potential impact of energy
software developers aiming to optimise energy efficiency and efficiency efforts in the above areas can result not only in
minimise the carbon footprint resulting from designing, financial gains but also open the way for technological
developing, deploying and running software in clouds. Based innovations e.g. sensors for energy and CO2 measurements at
on the ongoing work in the EC funded ASCETiC (Adapting micro level and new ways for machines to community within
Service lifecycle towards Efficient Clouds) project, the paper buildings. Lastly, monitoring of energy consumption and
provides an overview of a cloud architecture that can support environmental impact was deemed quite important since the
energy efficiency at service construction, deployment and development of effective monitoring techniques and
operations. The cloud architecture enables adequate support for mechanisms can have second order effect on any other system.
energy efficiency at different layers such as IaaS, PaaS and Energy efficiency motives – cost, environment and/or
SaaS. efficiency: The motives for energy efficiency can be different at
The paper A Look at Energy Efficient System Opportunities developer (of technological solutions) level and at organization
with Community Network Clouds describes community level. The discussions in the workshop unanimously concluded
networking as an emerging model of shared communication that at organization level cost is the most important factor or
infrastructure that can support interconnection and motive for achieving energy efficiency and environmental
interoperation of shared resources within different concerns can follow from that. On the other hand, for
communities. The introduction of cloud computing in technology developers efficiency is the top priority and as a
community networks is the focus of Clommunity project, consequence it can translate to energy saving and other
described in the paper. In this respect, community clouds can benefits. However, some participants placed less emphasis on
be seen as a set of federated micro-clouds that can be efficiency and linked it to the second order effect of quality
composed of diverse resource pool ranging from desktops to assurance. Environmental aspects are currently only reserved to
small data canters interlinked within a specific (community) a limited section of society and therefore depended on
cloud framework. The heterogeneity of resources in individual commitments or enforcement by regulatory
community cloud offers greater choices for the allocation of authorities.
suitable (e.g. energy efficient) resources to user application State of art – what’s new, What’s missing: Here the
based on an energy model of available resources. In this workshop participants had a lot to say about what’s currently
respect, the paper discusses different options to enable energy missing e.g. the discussions revealed that based on the low
efficiency in community clouds in order to realise support for levels of awareness about environmental implications, lack of
energy efficient systems in community clouds and to foster standardisation and best practices the commercial drive for eco-
collaboration with other related initiatives. friendliness is currently not there to realise full
commercialisation potential of energy efficiency systems at
III. DISCUSSIONS large. In this respect, establishment of new regulatory and
After the paper presentations, the workshop participants standardization measures and code of conduct can be an
were given time to discuss their point of view concerning the important step. In terms of new developments, distributed
state of energy efficient systems and what lies ahead in the resource utilization and ease of access enabled by cloud
future. The discussions that took place during the workshop on computing is a step forward from traditional networking
Energy Efficient Systems were focused on the following four topologies and grid. This new connectivity and access model
main topics: can allow investigation of new ideas and techniques for service
Energy efficient systems – target domains and potential delivery while considering different aspects such as energy
impact: The workshop participants expressed diverse opinion efficiency and, cost reductions.
ECO2Clouds Usefulness – new or innovative ideas, future the innovative techniques and prospective ideas to address
potential: Finally, this topic was focused on gathering general these issues. Finally, interested researchers and practitioners
opinion about the ECO2Clouds project based on the three paper are invited to look at the workshop papers in the ICT4S
presentations highlighting various aspects of the project earlier
workshop proceedings at http://ceur-ws.org.
in the workshop. The participants discussed the different
features of ECO2Clouds project particularly the CO2 V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
measurements at different levels of cloud infrastructure. For
participants new ideas developed in ECO2Clouds also included The workshop on Energy Efficiency Systems at ICT4S
the awareness of energy mix and its utilization in the decision conference has been supported by the ECO2Clouds project
making model and control mechanisms. In terms of future (http://eco2clouds.eu/) and has been partly funded by the
potential of ECO2Clouds ideas, the discussions raised the European Commission’s IST activity of the 7th Framework
various issues that can hold back any technological Program under contract number 318048.
advancements in the area of energy efficiency these included
varying level of support and regulatory measures concerning
CO2 emissions e.g. dynamic energy mix information is not
available in Germany and in France the regulations are in place
for CO2 audit of companies but there are no penalties yet.
However, the advancements made in the project were deemed a
step in the right direction.
Further, the workshop participants noticed that the research
in the area of energy efficiency was making its way towards
mainstream technologies and influencing different sects of
industrial solutions e.g. some cloud service providers are
pitching the use of green energy sources as their main
marketing messages. However, further research,
standardisation and clarity of existing regulatory measures can
help boost the awareness about energy efficient solutions and
ensure transparency across different levels of the market.
IV. SUMMARY
With rapid expansion of ICT infrastructures and increasing
popularity of cloud computing the topic of energy efficiency
and CO2 emissions has been getting profound attention owing
firstly to the growing financial pressure on infrastructure
providers to reduce energy related costs and secondly due to
the environmental policies and ‘green’ measures from
governments and other regulatory authorities (such as
European Commission) that impose levies on CO2 emissions
from corporate infrastructures. With this upbeat of
environmental concerns at different levels; for datacentre and
cloud infrastructure providers addressing energy efficiency and
CO2 footprint concerns will become as bigger challenge as
maintaining quality-of-service. Furthermore, in such
competitive and volatile market consumer awareness also plays
a key role in shifting market orientation. Thus environmental
awareness and pressure by regulatory authorities (such as EC)
can influence consumers’ selection criteria for ICT services,
adding more pressures for datacentres and cloud service
providers to do more!
In this respect, the workshop on Energy Efficient Systems
in the ICT4S conference provided a unique opportunity to
bring together different stakeholders at a single platform. The
overview of the accepted papers from the workshop shows a
focus on the important issues in the ICT domain and also on