Using proxy metrics for improving energy efficiency of software

Proxy metrics for energy consumption

  • CPU usage
  • memory usage
  • storage usage
  • network usage
  • costs

General approach

We could monitor the “vCPUs hours” over time to track our progress in improving the efficiency of our software, aiming to get the same performance from fewer computing resources.

Reliability of different proxy metrics

Costs

Since electricity is a big cost for cloud providers, if they are passing that cost directly on to us consumers, then cutting our electricity use will cut both hosting costs and carbon emissions. Great. But there is a big IF there.
— Anne Currie

Network usage

Energy consumption of network communication

Estimate carbon emissions of websites based on data transfer#⚠ Accuracy of website carbon calculators

How to?

Measure and track cloud efficiency with sustainability proxy metrics, Part II: Establish a metrics pipeline | AWS Cloud Financial Management

🔗 References

How to measure software carbon emissions for actionable insights by Ioannis Kolaxis