Month: July 2022

Our company’s Sustainability journey:
How AWS Sustainability can help

Sustainability is the sixth pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Adopting a sustainability strategy and following the AWS Sustainability standards and best practices brings numerous benefits. However, navigating these standards can be challenging without expert help.

Working with an experienced AWS Partner can help you meet these standards and reap the benefits without disrupting your operations or compromising your security.

The principles of AWS Sustainability

Although moving out of locally managed data centers in favour of the cloud is generally beneficial for emissions and cost-effectiveness, using Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the most benefits.

The company’s commitment to carbon emissions reduction has resulted in making Sustainability the sixth pillar of the Well-Architected Framework in December 2021. The Sustainability pillar integrates resource management, waste reduction, and environmental impact awareness into its development philosophy.

Benefits of AWS Sustainability

According to a 451 Research study commissioned by Amazon, moving away from standard enterprise infrastructure and toward AWS cloud-based solutions results in a 88% reduction in carbon emissions. AWS infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy-efficient than the average American locally-managed data center.

Even the top 10% of most energy-efficient organisations would benefit from a significant reduction (72% on average) in carbon emissions. Additionally, technological advances in renewable energies and the increasing prevalence of renewable energy solutions, such as solar farms and wind farms, indicate that carbon savings will only increase over time.

Amazon estimates that operations and infrastructure will be 100% renewable-powered by 2025 and reach net-zero emissions by 2040. This means that all companies using AWS will benefit from these sustainability efforts.

How to become AWS Sustainability compliant

Although Amazon’s efforts to improve the sustainability of its services provide passive benefits to all customers that have migrated to AWS, the customer also plays an active role under the principle of Shared Responsibility. While Amazon is responsible for the sustainability of the cloud’s infrastructure, the customer is responsible for using the services as sustainably and efficiently as possible.

Becoming compliant with AWS Sustainability standards is primarily about following a concept known as Energy-Proportional Computing: Resource usage awareness and optimisation, maximising the usage of existing instances and services, consolidating underused ones, and eliminating idle or unused services.

Work with an experienced AWS partner today

At WOLK Technology, your sustainability journey is also ours. Our team of Amazon Web Services experts can help you analyse your company’s AWS service usage, find inefficiencies and carbon-intensive services, and help you streamline your company’s energy consumption without reducing your workload capabilities or compromising security. Contact us today for more information.

VIDEO SERIES – Is disaster recovery only for the big end of town?

In this educational series video, Wolk’s CEO goes into exactly what a Well Architected Review is and how it can benefit your business. The best part? For many, a Well Architected Review can be a cost neutral exercise that saves you big in the long run.

“Disaster recovery is only for the big end of town” – This couldn’t be less true. At the end of the day, down time is bad… and costly no matter the size of your business.

Work With an Experienced AWS Partner
WOLK Technology understands better than anyone else that today’s workflows must perform as expected around the clock, without interruptions. For this reason, we offer tailored solutions to help ensure your AWS business is secure, reliable, and free of unnecessary risks. Contact us today for more information.

AWS and Sustainability: Helping the Cloud Go Green

In 2021, Amazon introduced a new pillar to the core five of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: Sustainability. This new pillar helps businesses and customers improve the environmental impact of their workloads and usage of cloud services through what Amazon refers to as the Shared Responsibility Model of Cloud Sustainability.

According to Amazon, this model reduces energy usage by up to 80%, with plans to depend entirely on renewable energy sources by 2025. Here’s how the Sustainability pillar helps the cloud go green and how the Shared Responsibility Model works.

Essential Principles of the Shared Responsibility Model of Cloud Sustainability

The Shared Responsibility Model of Cloud Sustainability is an application of Amazon’s Shared Responsibility Model from the point of view of the Sustainability pillar. Amazon and the customer share different responsibilities for sustainability and efficiency in many of the same ways as security and data protection.

Under this model, Amazon is responsible for the sustainability and environmental impact of the cloud, whereas the customer is responsible for sustainability in the cloud. The distinction is critical, as it summarises who holds which roles.

AWS Responsibilities

The phrase “sustainability of the cloud” refers to Amazon’s role in maintaining efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable cloud infrastructure. Amazon is responsible for the following:

● Server and hardware maintenance
● Efficient and environmentally friendly cooling solutions
● Building and maintaining infrastructure to house data centers
● Management of basic utilities at data center locations such as water, power, and waste

Amazon’s role is to build, maintain, and ensure the proper operation of the buildings and hardware supporting cloud computing networks, using renewable energy and resources. According to a joint Amazon-451 Research study, an AWS data centre is 3.6x more energy efficient than the average data center.

Customer Responsibilities

Although the customer is not responsible for the underlying hardware and platforms, their role regarding compliance with the Sustainability pillar is primarily centered around efficient and sustainable utilisation of their resources.

The customer is responsible for the following:

● Sustainable data design and usage
● Efficient software application design
● Proper deployment and scaling of their platforms
● Efficient utilisation of data storage
● High code efficiency; lean, fast, and reliable code is more sustainable than heavy and complex code

It is up to the customer to identify their utilisation metrics and optimise accordingly. For example, a sustainability compliance program can help you find idling and over-utilised instances, enable instance hibernation when not in use, identify wasteful user behaviour patterns, or determine whether to scale up or down.

Optimise Your Business With a Trusted AWS Partner

At WOLK, we aim to provide efficient and sustainable IT solutions with Amazon Web Services. Partner with us and take advantage of our Well-Architected Review to ensure your business complies with all sustainability best practices.

VIDEO SERIES – Disaster Recovery. What is it and why is it so important?

In this educational series video, Wolk’s CEO goes outlines exactly what a Disaster Recovery Plan is and how it should be a crucial part of any business security policy.

Work With an Experienced AWS Partner
WOLK Technology understands better than anyone else that today’s workflows must perform as expected around the clock, without interruptions. For this reason, we offer tailored solutions to help ensure your AWS business is secure, reliable, and free of unnecessary risks. Contact us today for more information.