Breaking Through to a Greener Cloud, Using Stranded Power
Our growing virtual lives produce a very real carbon footprint. The massive computing and data centers that support our social networks, online shopping and video streaming are a voracious consumer of energy, using over 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year in the United States -- 3 percent of the country’s total energy budget, and growing rapidly.
UCARE Research Group Catalogs “Fail-Slow” Nightmares for Large-Scale Systems
Cloud providers, data centers, computer clusters, and other large-scale computer systems, share a common boogeyman: the fail-slow. Unlike its more dramatic cousin the fail-stop, which simply shuts down a software program or hardware component, the fail-slow can be a much more subtle and nefarious culprit, throttling performance in mysterious ways. Tracking down the source of a fail-slow fault can take up hundreds of valuable hours, and the primary cause can be the last thing you’d expect: a single faulty cooling fan, high altitude, or even a poorly-placed desk chair.