Managing Distributed Cloud Infrastructures for Sustainability

Diverse computing paradigms are continuously emerging, transforming how a device interacts with data and completes tasks. These advancements offer functional benefits, like allowing even basic devices to run powerful applications efficiently by offloading demanding tasks to computing centers with available processing power and storage. This ease of task delegation has led to a boom in the number of users, more powerful and critical applications, and a constant drive to expand computing infrastructures to keep up with intensifying demands. However, this growing capacity and geographical distribution comes with a rising environmental cost. Some solutions are being developed to mitigate the environmental impact, including infrastructure optimization (hardware and design choices), finding dynamic ways for lower energy use (both in the hardware and software), using eco-friendly energy sources, etc. This chapter delves into the evolution of the computing landscape, the environmental challenges it presents, and the solutions being developed to address them. We first present the evolution of cloud (and edge) computing infrastructures, and their growing environmental footprint. Then, we discuss how distributed infrastructures can be designed while limiting their environmental impact. We detail approaches that aim to optimize Cloud infrastructure operations and their environmental footprint. We present methods to perform holistic optimization in order to synchronize the Cloud workloads with power generation and to optimize heat rejection patterns. Finally, we conclude this overview of sustainable management strategies for distributed Cloud infrastructures.