8 Principles of Green Software Engineering

Climate science, software techniques and architecture, energy markets, hardware, and data center design are all part of the emerging discipline of green software engineering (also known as Software Green Engineering). The talents and capabilities required to design, create, and run green, sustainable software solutions are outlined in the Principles of Green Software Engineering (GSE Principles).

Outlined below is a core set of concepts. These concepts are not in any particular sequence, but they should all be considered when developing and deploying software for sustainability and climate change.

1) Building from Scratch – Don’t buy cloud or other existing platforms

You can tailor a solution to fit your needs perfectly by building from scratch. If you don’t need built-in reporting tools or adhering to compliance protocols, you aren’t forced to use them. You will avoid costly licenses and customization charges, allowing you to build something tailored precisely for your company’s unique requirements. By creating everything yourself (or contracting out as needed), you are also less likely to accidentally become dependent on an inflexible or proprietary system that might not be able to evolve with your business. Building an application entirely from scratch means fewer moving parts, making it easier to troubleshoot problems and maintain in general.

2) Use Open Source wherever possible

Open-source software is cheaper, better, and less prone to bugs or malicious code, and it’s constantly evolving thanks to user feedback. If you’re building green energy software, look for an open-source project that can do 80% of what you need and contribute back!

3) Reduce energy consumption in every layer: servers, networks, etc.

Anything you can do to reduce power consumption in your software and data center will be a win. One key place is server utilization, which means reducing over-provisioning. This could be as simple as using virtualization, turning off unused servers, or cloud computing. A better practice might be software-defined networking (SDN), which gives developers control over how their applications move through their networks, requiring less energy and making more efficient infrastructure investments. Another approach might be finding intelligent ways to harvest latent energy that could provide energy more efficiently than generators – think tapping into solar panels, harnessing geothermal sources, or taking advantage of temperature differentials at night versus during the day.

4) Minimize infrastructure footprint by running more instances per machine

Every time you scale up your application to use more power, you create additional unnecessary carbon emissions. To avoid these, scale down when possible—which means running fewer virtual servers on each physical machine. Virtual servers only require a fraction of a physical server’s energy and resources, so running fewer instances per machine can significantly reduce your energy footprint while boosting performance.

5) Utilize Infrastructure as Code

Automation is critical to adopting more sustainable practices because it enables you to standardize how software development gets done and streamlines how IT infrastructure is managed. Replacing physical hardware with virtual machines (VM) in an environment that adheres to Infrastructure as Code principles can significantly reduce electricity use. In addition, Infrastructure as Code can be used to automate other practices such as provisioning services on demand and adjusting resource allocation based on workloads.

6) Embrace common sense optimizations with cloud computing

With software, there’s a lot you can do without adding more hardware. Many software developers don’t think about performance until they run into problems, but that can be inefficient. Before designing a new system, build a prototype and test it on actual data to verify performance and capacity requirements assumptions. For example, any number crunching should be done on separate servers in parallel. That way, you only need to bring back results to display or analyze them when they are complete—not during execution time.

7) Automate everything on your servers

If there is a repetitive task that you’re repeatedly doing on a server, there’s probably an automation solution to help you out. Scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, and Bash are powerful enough to automatically accomplish complex or straightforward tasks. For example, if you install and configure software onto your servers multiple times, consider automating these tasks with a script. Even small gains from scripting everything on your servers can add up over time.

8) Focus first on application development – then migrate to DevOps when ready

If you’re focused on green IT and sustainable applications, it’s essential to think about software design and application architecture. While development is top-of-mind, one key recommendation is that it may be best to wait until your organization is ready for DevOps before applying these principles to your software stack.

It's critical to consider software design and application architecture if you're interested in green IT and sustainable applications. While development is at the forefront of everyone's minds, one essential tip is to wait until your business is ready for sustainable DevOps and green software philosophy before adopting these principles to your software stack. Knoldus is an organization that strictly follows green software engineering principles and they will be delighted to discuss their green approach with you and learn from you.