8. Operate a greener service
The way that services are operated, include data management, will have implications for environmental impacts.
8a. Audit environments
There are a number of strategies that can help minimize wasted resources.
[More detail to be added here]
Actions
(i) Run workloads at times when low-carbon electricity is available
In addition, if possible, design for ‘carbon-aware’, and run workloads that are not time-critical at times when there is low-carbon electricity available at a given location.
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Climate Impact by Area, Electricity Maps
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UK Carbon Intensity Forecast by Region, National Grid ESO
(i) Conduct regular reviews of resource usage
Conduct regular reviews to identify idle or over-provisioned resources.
(ii) Turn off unneeded resources
Decommission or switch off additional environments, such as testing / Quality Assurance (QA) / pre-production when they are no longer in use, thereby saving resources. Right sizing should become an ongoing process, conduct regular reviews to ensure optimal resource usage.
8b. Other points on operation
Actions
(i) Apply SRE mindset to optimise energy usage and sustainablilty SLOs
Site reliability engineering (SRE) is the practice of applying software engineering principles to operations and infrastructure processes
A service level objective (SLO) is a performance target for a service that's part of a service level agreement (SLA) between a customer and a service provider.