A Catalog of Architectural Tactic - Energy Efficiency

A Catalog of Architectural Tactic - Energy Efficiency

Abstract—Energy efficiency is a primary concern for the ICT sector. In particular, the widespread adoption of cloud computing technologies has drawn attention to the massive energy consumption of data centers. Although hardware constantly improves with respect to energy efficiency, this should also be a main concern for software. We analysed the literature and elicited a set of techniques for addressing energy efficiency in cloud-based software architectures and mobile sensing. From the perspective of software architecture, mobile sensing bears several design challenges regarding, e.g., use of battery powered mobile devices, and collection and processing of sensor data. In this paper, we present tactics to address these architecture design challenges. In this work we codified these techniques in the form of Architectural Tactics. These tactics will help architects extend their design reasoning towards energy efficiency and to apply reusable solutions for greener software.

Keywords—software architecture;architecture tactics

1.  Introduction

The global energy consumption of data centers and Internet infrastructure is predicted to consume approximately 18% of expected world power capacity by 2030 [1]. As the adoption of cloud computing technologies continues to grow, the need for energy-efficient solutions becomes evident. Nonetheless, cloud-based software holds great potential for energy efficiency(EE). A recent study [2] showed that migrating all business applications in the U.S. to the cloud could reduce their energy footprint by 87%. A previous work [3] started to analyze the cost and energy benefits of data migration to the cloud. However, this transition to the cloud is not an easy task. Cloud-based software must be appropriately designed to address EE, which is typically not the case for traditional business applications. If these applications are abruptly migrated, it is highly likely that the resulting energy waste would significantly outweigh the expected benefits. For this reason, it is time for software engineers to take into account the energy implications of their design decisions. Recent efforts of the software engineering community [4] have stressed the responsibility of software in the search for sustainability. One of the challenges that emerged for Green Software Engineering is finding generally reusable solutions for energy-efficient software design. In previous work we performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) [5] to discover software architectural solutions for cloud-based software that addressed EE-related issues. The SLR identified a number of recurring techniques that were potentially reusable in other solutions. In this work we codified these techniques in the form of Architectural Tactics. These tactics can be adopted by software architects and developers during the design and development of cloud-based software systems or the refactoring of existing business applications for cloud migration. This contribution will support decision-making when dealing with EE aspects of cloud-based software architectures.