Tech Tip #53: Test your workload on other CPU architectures

Your app might run cheaper and leaner on ARM.

Video created by explainapaper.com

The problem

Workloads stay on x86 instances out of habit, even when cloud providers offer ARM-based alternatives with good performance per watt.

The fix you can use today

  • Build multi-architecture container images.
  • Benchmark a representative service on an ARM instance: throughput, latency, cost and, where you can, energy.
  • Move services where the numbers are better.

The Green Software Foundation suggests testing your software on other kinds of processor. GreenCode draws on these patterns when it checks software.

Tools that help

  • Docker build best practices (Docker): multi-stage builds, small base images and leaving build tools out of the final image
  • Cloud Carbon Footprint: estimates the energy and emissions of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud usage from billing and usage data

How GreenCode helps

GreenCode helps tackle this by mapping a running estate, rebuilding it as infrastructure as code and showing which services use the energy, including services barely running at all. More on this.

Tags

#cloud#hardware#cost

Sources

Transcript

Your app might run cheaper and leaner on ARM. Many workloads stay on the same kind of processor out of habit. Yet cloud providers offer ARM-based machines too. Many of them do more work for each watt. But how well they do differs from program to program. The only way to know for your code is to measure it. Here is the fix you can use today. First, build container images for more than one kind of processor, following Docker's build guide. Next, test a typical service on an ARM machine. Compare throughput, response time, cost and energy, using tools like Cloud Carbon Footprint. Then move the services where the numbers are better. The Green Software Foundation suggests testing your software on other kinds of processor. GreenCode draws on these patterns when it checks software. GreenCode helps tackle this by mapping your running systems and rebuilding them as code. It shows which services use the energy, including ones barely running at all. That was GreenCode Tech Tip number fifty-three. Follow for the next tip, and find more on greencode.ai/tech-tips.

All GreenCode Tech Tips · All GreenCode videos

  • Tip #53
  • For Ops and infrastructure
  • Length 1:07
  • Category Cloud and infrastructure
GreenCode

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