Cloud Computing: Creating a Multi-Cloud Environment to Increase Reliability of Applications; Assessing the Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing Infrastructure

The goal of this technical and STS research is to advance the research and development of cloud computing technology, while exploring how the design of these tools can impact reliability and sustainability. The aim of the technical project is to create a multi-cloud ecosystem that allows different cloud services to work together smoothly across multiple providers. This setup boosts reliability, flexibility, and performance by utilizing the strengths of each platform.
The STS research paper investigates the environmental impact of cloud computing, especially the energy use and carbon emissions from large data centers. Exploring the design of hardware systems can help reduce the environmental effects of cloud technologies is crucial as the cloud computing industry grows.
A major concern with cloud computing is the potential for service outages, which can cause crucial applications to be temporarily inaccessible. These outages may stem from power failures, cyberattacks, or natural disasters. These applications can be severely impacted by even brief outages due to their reliance on continuous access to important information.
During a recent internship, I worked with a team of five interns to address this issue by developing a multi-cloud deployment solution. This approach involves duplicating application deployments across two or more cloud providers. When a user accesses the application, they are routed to one of the cloud providers, and if that cloud provider is experiencing an outage, the user is automatically directly to a healthy provider. By utilizing health checks and failover logic, the system ensures continuous availability even during a service disruption.
From this experience, I learned the importance of building resilient systems that can tolerate unexpected failures. Working on a multi-cloud deployment solution taught me how to think critically about system architecture and design for high availability and resilience. This project emphasized the responsibility engineers have when building systems that people rely on, especially when those systems support critical services.
For my STS research, I chose to examine the environmental impact of cloud computing and investigate how sustainable cooling technologies can help reduce this growing issue. I focused on understanding how data centers contribute to energy and water consumption, and what strategies exist to minimize their ecological footprint. Through analyzing various case studies, I found that hybrid cooling systems that combine free cooling and liquid cooling techniques offer a sustainable solution. These systems provide greater adaptability to climate differences, enhancing overall efficiency. However, the research also pointed out limitations, such as the difficulty in generalizing results due to regional climate variations and the uncertain long-term effectiveness of these technologies.
Through this research, I learned the critical role that sustainability plays in the cloud computing industry. I gained a deeper understanding of how data centers, despite offering scalability and efficiency, can have significant environmental impact due to their energy usage. Additionally, I learned that innovative solutions have the potential to mitigate the environmental impacts of this industry by reducing energy consumption, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and improving resource efficiency, all of which are crucial for creating a more sustainable future for cloud computing. Overall, this research emphasized the importance of sustainable innovation, and it highlighted that environmental responsibility must be a core consideration as cloud computing continues to grow.
The technical project and STS research both highlight the importance of considering reliability and sustainability in the design of cloud computing systems. By focusing on the development of a multi-cloud ecosystem, I learned that ensuring system availability and resilience during service disruptions is crucial for maintaining trust and efficiency in cloud-based applications. This project reinforced the need for engineers to create robust systems that can handle unexpected failures. At the same time, the STS research underscored the environmental implications of cloud computing, particularly in terms of energy and water consumption by data centers. The research revealed that innovating cooling solutions in data centers can help reduce the ecological footprint of cloud computing. Ultimately, both the technical project and the STS research emphasize the need for sustainable innovation in cloud computing to ensure that this rapidly growing industry remains both reliable and environmentally responsible as it continues to expand.