Enabling Sustainable Cloud Computing With Low-Carbon Server Design

To combat climate change, we must reduce carbon emissions from hyperscale cloud computing. Compute servers cause the majority of a general-purpose cloud’s emissions. Thus, we are motivated to design carbon-efficient compute server stock keeping units (SKUs), or GreenSKUs, using recently available low-carbon components. We built three GreenSKU prototypes, integrating energy-efficient CPUs, reusing old dynamic RAM via compute express link, and reusing old solid-state drives. We reveal challenges that limit GreenSKUs’ carbon savings at scale and may prevent their adoption by cloud providers. To address these challenges, we developed a novel framework, GSF (GreenSKU Framework), that enables cloud providers to systematically evaluate GreenSKUs’ carbon savings at scale. By implementing GSF within Microsoft Azure’s production constraints, we demonstrate that GreenSKUs reduce net cloud emissions by 8%, which is globally significant. This work is the first to demonstrate and quantify how carbon-efficient server designs translate to measurable cloud-scale emissions reductions, enabling meaningful contributions to cloud sustainability goals.