Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Vi to]

Then the foundation should assign higher priority to projects (to fund)
which take into account environmental impact. For example a GLAM project
printing fliers would rank better if fliers are printed on recycled paper.
Same for suppliers/providers of any kind of good: the less the impact the
higher the rank.

Dealing with black skins...you know that would mean, more or less, "turning
trees into pulp to print fliers against turning trees into pulp" ^^

Vito

2016-05-24 1:40 GMT+02:00 Ricordisamoa :

> Server consumption of course but what about the impact of email, food,
> transport etc?
> Earth Hour: switch the wikis to a dark skin
>
>
> Il 30/03/2016 09:27, Lukas Mezger ha scritto:
>
>> Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
>>
>> I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
>> reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
>> . The main idea is
>> to
>> use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
>> for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
>> environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
>>
>> My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
>>  about the
>> energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
>> which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
>> score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
>> about
>> its energy consumption.
>>
>> I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
>> "Environmental
>> impact " on Meta. I
>> have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
>> Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
>> positive responses.
>>
>> In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
>> how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
>> figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
>>
>> Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
>> can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
>> sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
>>
>> So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
>> better forum to discuss these questions?
>>
>> Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
>> your name to this list
>> .
>> Thank you.
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
>> ___
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>>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Ricordisamoa]

Server consumption of course but what about the impact of email, food, 
transport etc?

Earth Hour: switch the wikis to a dark skin

Il 30/03/2016 09:27, Lukas Mezger ha scritto:

Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,

I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
. The main idea is to
use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.

My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
 about the
energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness about
its energy consumption.

I would very much like to change that and set up a page called "Environmental
impact " on Meta. I
have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
positive responses.

In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.

Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.

So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
better forum to discuss these questions?

Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
your name to this list
.
Thank you.
Kind regards,

Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Ryan Kaldari]

>
> This is why I was hoping
> that someone could explain the technicalities of the U.S. energy system to
> me – can't we simply ask our datacenter providers to order renewable energy
> for our servers, maybe for an extra charge? This is what you can do in
> Europe, but I have a feeling things are not just as easy in the U.S.


In the U.S., electrical utilities are mostly regulated at the state level,
not the federal level. There is no federal renewable energy policy (AFAIK),
but over half of the states in the U.S. have a renewable portfolio standard
requiring utility companies to supply some percentage of their electricity
from renewable sources. In addition, some utility companies in the U.S. let
consumers purchase "green energy" at a higher price. So basically, you
would need to investigate the policies of the specific electricity
companies used by the datacenters as well as the policies of the states
they reside in.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Pine W]

Some of this depends on geography.

For example, in Washington State, we have significant hydroelectric
capacity. (See http://www.eia.gov/state/print.cfm?sid=WA)

My understanding is that some data centers are being placed in the far
global north to take advantage of cold air or water  temperatures for data
center cooling.

Pine
On May 18, 2016 14:33, "Lukas Mezger"  wrote:

> You are right that our demand in bandwidth is comparably low, Ryan. But we
> do have an extremely strong brand, and the power of some really great
> people working and volunteering for Wikimedia. This is why I was hoping
> that someone could explain the technicalities of the U.S. energy system to
> me – can't we simply ask our datacenter providers to order renewable energy
> for our servers, maybe for an extra charge? This is what you can do in
> Europe, but I have a feeling things are not just as easy in the U.S.
> Thanks,
>
> Lukas
>
> 2016-05-16 19:40 GMT+02:00 Ryan Lane :
>
> > On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 12:45 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Yes, we're also looking into reducing the environmental impact of the
> > rest
> > > of the activities in the Wikimedia movement. And I am very aware that
> > many
> > > websites consume a lot more energy than Wikipedia does. (Please see
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact for more
> > > information.)
> > >
> > > But this doesn't mean we should not try to have the Wikimedia servers
> run
> > > on renewable energy. Even some big for-profit companies like Apple and
> > > Yahoo are already doing this. So, how can we get there as well and what
> > > would it cost us?
> > >
> > >
> > When you're as large as Apple or Yahoo, it's easy to pressure your
> > infrastructure providers to run on renewables. Wikimedia has basically no
> > bargaining power because they spend very little money (because they don't
> > run a lot of servers). I know Wikimedia feels huge and important, and
> it's
> > important in a lot of ways, but when it comes to pressuring datacenter
> > providers, it may as well not exist.
> >
> > It's possible that the only available option is to bring up new
> datacenters
> > in areas with renewable energy, and those datacenters may not be as
> > reliable, they may not be as well connected from a networking point of
> > view, they may have poor security and many other issues. I wouldn't
> expect
> > much movement towards renewables here until there's some really large
> > companies pushing for this in the relevant datacenters.
> >
> > - Ryan
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> >
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

You are right that our demand in bandwidth is comparably low, Ryan. But we
do have an extremely strong brand, and the power of some really great
people working and volunteering for Wikimedia. This is why I was hoping
that someone could explain the technicalities of the U.S. energy system to
me – can't we simply ask our datacenter providers to order renewable energy
for our servers, maybe for an extra charge? This is what you can do in
Europe, but I have a feeling things are not just as easy in the U.S.
Thanks,

Lukas

2016-05-16 19:40 GMT+02:00 Ryan Lane :

> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 12:45 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
>
> > Yes, we're also looking into reducing the environmental impact of the
> rest
> > of the activities in the Wikimedia movement. And I am very aware that
> many
> > websites consume a lot more energy than Wikipedia does. (Please see
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact for more
> > information.)
> >
> > But this doesn't mean we should not try to have the Wikimedia servers run
> > on renewable energy. Even some big for-profit companies like Apple and
> > Yahoo are already doing this. So, how can we get there as well and what
> > would it cost us?
> >
> >
> When you're as large as Apple or Yahoo, it's easy to pressure your
> infrastructure providers to run on renewables. Wikimedia has basically no
> bargaining power because they spend very little money (because they don't
> run a lot of servers). I know Wikimedia feels huge and important, and it's
> important in a lot of ways, but when it comes to pressuring datacenter
> providers, it may as well not exist.
>
> It's possible that the only available option is to bring up new datacenters
> in areas with renewable energy, and those datacenters may not be as
> reliable, they may not be as well connected from a networking point of
> view, they may have poor security and many other issues. I wouldn't expect
> much movement towards renewables here until there's some really large
> companies pushing for this in the relevant datacenters.
>
> - Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Ryan Lane]

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 12:45 AM, Lukas Mezger 
wrote:

> Yes, we're also looking into reducing the environmental impact of the rest
> of the activities in the Wikimedia movement. And I am very aware that many
> websites consume a lot more energy than Wikipedia does. (Please see
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact for more
> information.)
>
> But this doesn't mean we should not try to have the Wikimedia servers run
> on renewable energy. Even some big for-profit companies like Apple and
> Yahoo are already doing this. So, how can we get there as well and what
> would it cost us?
>
>
When you're as large as Apple or Yahoo, it's easy to pressure your
infrastructure providers to run on renewables. Wikimedia has basically no
bargaining power because they spend very little money (because they don't
run a lot of servers). I know Wikimedia feels huge and important, and it's
important in a lot of ways, but when it comes to pressuring datacenter
providers, it may as well not exist.

It's possible that the only available option is to bring up new datacenters
in areas with renewable energy, and those datacenters may not be as
reliable, they may not be as well connected from a networking point of
view, they may have poor security and many other issues. I wouldn't expect
much movement towards renewables here until there's some really large
companies pushing for this in the relevant datacenters.

- Ryan
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Yes, we're also looking into reducing the environmental impact of the rest
of the activities in the Wikimedia movement. And I am very aware that many
websites consume a lot more energy than Wikipedia does. (Please see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact for more information.)

But this doesn't mean we should not try to have the Wikimedia servers run
on renewable energy. Even some big for-profit companies like Apple and
Yahoo are already doing this. So, how can we get there as well and what
would it cost us?

Thanks for your help!

Lukas

2016-05-16 9:02 GMT+02:00 John Mark Vandenberg :

> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 1:42 AM, Tim Landscheidt 
> wrote:
> > Lukas Mezger  wrote:
> >
> >> With the help of Juliet Barbara and Gregory Varnum, we now have detailed
> >> public figures regarding the energy use and energy sources of the
> Wikimedia
> >> servers: As of May 2016, the servers use 222 kW, summing up to about 2
> GWh
> >> of electrical energy per year. For more information, please see
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact.
> >
> >> The next step would be to figure out the cost and feasibility of having
> the
> >> servers run on 100% renewable energy. I'd appreciate it if someone could
> >> help me find out how this works. As a European consumer, I can order
> >> renewable energy for my house simply by calling my energy company on the
> >> phone, with the price difference being negligible. I assume it is not
> just
> >> as easy in our case, right?
> >
> > At Hawaii consumer prices, 2 GWh equals less than
> > US-$ 800,000; that would be roughly 1 % of the Wikimedia
> > Foundation budget.  Don't you think it would be much better
> > for *actually* reducing the environmental impact to start on
> > the 99 % (or probably more like 99.5 %)?  It would certainly
> > be cheaper than paying *more* for energy.
>
> What is an energy consumption estimate of the other 99% of budget
> expenditure?
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[John Mark Vandenberg]

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 1:42 AM, Tim Landscheidt  
wrote:
> Lukas Mezger  wrote:
>
>> With the help of Juliet Barbara and Gregory Varnum, we now have detailed
>> public figures regarding the energy use and energy sources of the Wikimedia
>> servers: As of May 2016, the servers use 222 kW, summing up to about 2 GWh
>> of electrical energy per year. For more information, please see
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact.
>
>> The next step would be to figure out the cost and feasibility of having the
>> servers run on 100% renewable energy. I'd appreciate it if someone could
>> help me find out how this works. As a European consumer, I can order
>> renewable energy for my house simply by calling my energy company on the
>> phone, with the price difference being negligible. I assume it is not just
>> as easy in our case, right?
>
> At Hawaii consumer prices, 2 GWh equals less than
> US-$ 800,000; that would be roughly 1 % of the Wikimedia
> Foundation budget.  Don't you think it would be much better
> for *actually* reducing the environmental impact to start on
> the 99 % (or probably more like 99.5 %)?  It would certainly
> be cheaper than paying *more* for energy.

What is an energy consumption estimate of the other 99% of budget expenditure?

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Giuseppe Lavagetto]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 12:39 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:

> I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
> could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
> saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
> would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
> automation for failover and periodic updates.
>

Just a small clarification: I don't think turning off and on
periodically servers would be a feasible option because servers (and
computers in general) tend to have a pretty high failure rate when
being powered off and on regularly. We see this with some server
failing every time we do a mass reboot due to some security issue. On
the other hand, we could surely do better in terms of idle-server
power consumption. In terms of costs and time spent (and probably also
natural resources consumption, but I did no calculation whatsoever) it
would probably be not sustainable.


> Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
> disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time.

Another small clarification: our codfw datacenter is _not_ just a hot
spare for disaster recovery and a lot of work has been done to make
the two facilities mostly active-active (and a lot more will be done
in the coming year).

Cheers,

Giuseppe
P.S. The server energy footprint of the WMF is negligible if compared
to the big internet players, but even a small-medium size local ISP
has probably a larger footprint than us. This doesn't mean we should
not try to get better, but we should always put things in prespective.
-- 
Giuseppe Lavagetto
Senior Technical Operations Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Tim Landscheidt]

Lukas Mezger  wrote:

> With the help of Juliet Barbara and Gregory Varnum, we now have detailed
> public figures regarding the energy use and energy sources of the Wikimedia
> servers: As of May 2016, the servers use 222 kW, summing up to about 2 GWh
> of electrical energy per year. For more information, please see
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact.

> The next step would be to figure out the cost and feasibility of having the
> servers run on 100% renewable energy. I'd appreciate it if someone could
> help me find out how this works. As a European consumer, I can order
> renewable energy for my house simply by calling my energy company on the
> phone, with the price difference being negligible. I assume it is not just
> as easy in our case, right?

At Hawaii consumer prices, 2 GWh equals less than
US-$ 800,000; that would be roughly 1 % of the Wikimedia
Foundation budget.  Don't you think it would be much better
for *actually* reducing the environmental impact to start on
the 99 % (or probably more like 99.5 %)?  It would certainly
be cheaper than paying *more* for energy.

Tim


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,

With the help of Juliet Barbara and Gregory Varnum, we now have detailed
public figures regarding the energy use and energy sources of the Wikimedia
servers: As of May 2016, the servers use 222 kW, summing up to about 2 GWh
of electrical energy per year. For more information, please see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact.

The next step would be to figure out the cost and feasibility of having the
servers run on 100% renewable energy. I'd appreciate it if someone could
help me find out how this works. As a European consumer, I can order
renewable energy for my house simply by calling my energy company on the
phone, with the price difference being negligible. I assume it is not just
as easy in our case, right?

Thank you,

Lukas

2016-03-31 0:47 GMT+02:00 Katherine Maher :

> Thanks Tim for clarifying.
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Tim Starling 
> wrote:
>
> > On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote:
> > > IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> > > evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back
> >
> > Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I
> > did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate
> > facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's
> > presumably what you're referring to.
> >
> > <
> >
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1adt45Msw2o8Ml0s8S0USm9QLkW9ER3xCPkU9d2NJS4Y/edit#gid=0
> > >
> >
> > My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst
> > candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering
> > was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a
> > rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality
> > offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference.
> >
> > However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said
> > offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that
> > was never done.
> >
> > codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a
> > near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large
> > number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions
> > assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them,
> > following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average.
> > It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an
> > industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for
> > evaporative cooling or "free" cooling.
> >
> > > Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our
> > colos,
> > > so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> > > based on scale alone.
> >
> > I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
> > could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
> > saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
> > would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
> > automation for failover and periodic updates.
> >
> > Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
> > disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't
> > popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an
> > organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that
> > I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as
> > an effective use of donor funds.
> >
> > Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely
> > rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of
> > years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle
> > power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the
> > only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is
> > powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF
> > presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we
> > could at least include power management and efficiency as
> > consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases.
> >
> > > At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how
> we
> > > could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've
> > had
> > > limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> > > transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting
> as
> > > executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like
> to
> > > continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> > > findings of this effort.
> >
> > We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be
> > cheap and effective.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
> >
> >
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Katherine Maher]

Thanks Tim for clarifying.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Tim Starling 
wrote:

> On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote:
> > IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> > evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back
>
> Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I
> did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate
> facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's
> presumably what you're referring to.
>
> <
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1adt45Msw2o8Ml0s8S0USm9QLkW9ER3xCPkU9d2NJS4Y/edit#gid=0
> >
>
> My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst
> candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering
> was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a
> rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality
> offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference.
>
> However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said
> offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that
> was never done.
>
> codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a
> near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large
> number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions
> assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them,
> following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average.
> It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an
> industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for
> evaporative cooling or "free" cooling.
>
> > Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our
> colos,
> > so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> > based on scale alone.
>
> I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
> could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
> saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
> would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
> automation for failover and periodic updates.
>
> Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
> disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't
> popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an
> organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that
> I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as
> an effective use of donor funds.
>
> Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely
> rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of
> years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle
> power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the
> only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is
> powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF
> presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we
> could at least include power management and efficiency as
> consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases.
>
> > At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> > could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've
> had
> > limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> > transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> > executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> > continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> > findings of this effort.
>
> We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be
> cheap and effective.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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-- 
Katherine Maher

Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kma...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Tim Starling]

On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote:
> IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back

Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I
did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate
facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's
presumably what you're referring to.



My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst
candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering
was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a
rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality
offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference.

However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said
offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that
was never done.

codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a
near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large
number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions
assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them,
following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average.
It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an
industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for
evaporative cooling or "free" cooling.

> Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
> so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> based on scale alone.

I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We
could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power
saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it
would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable
automation for failover and periodic updates.

Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter
disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't
popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an
organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that
I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as
an effective use of donor funds.

Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely
rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of
years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle
power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the
only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is
powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF
presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we
could at least include power management and efficiency as
consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases.

> At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
> limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> findings of this effort.

We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be
cheap and effective.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Scott MacLeod]

Thanks for sharing this Katherine, and All,

Best regards,
Scott



On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks Lukas for bringing this back up. Since my name was mentioned, I'll
> share some context, but I'm copying my colleague Juliet Barbara who is best
> positioned to move this forward, as she is the current holder of our
> relationship with Greenpeace.
>
> The Comms, Finance, and COO teams met with Greenpeace in 2015 to discuss
> the ways the WMF could improve our overall environmental footprint. The
> Foundation already has some positive efforts underway formally and
> informally - IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
> evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back, we
> are transparent (if not overly proactive) in disclosure of energy
> consumption, we have sensible policies around server efficiency and
> hardware replacement, and we have pushed for clean energy alternatives for
> our SF office consumption.
>
> We are less effective in areas such as advocacy and purchasing (e.g.,
> stating this is a priority for the movement, pushing our colos to provide
> clean sources/mixes). Some of these are questions of scale and efficiency -
> Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
> so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
> based on scale alone.
>
> At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
> could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
> limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
> transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
> executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
> continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
> findings of this effort.
>
> Katherine
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear MZMcBride and Brion,
> >
> > Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.
> >
> > – I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
> > environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
> > went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
> > cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.
> >
> > – In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
> > about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.
> >
> > – It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
> > but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
> > renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
> > commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
> > endowment.
> >
> > – I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
> > answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
> > is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
> > Maher) shared with Greenpeace.
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Lukas / Gnom
> >
> > 2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :
> >
> > > On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger  >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> > > >
> > > > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project
> > to
> > > > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > > > . The main
> idea
> > is
> > > > to
> > > > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> > > reason
> > > > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > > > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> > > >
> > > > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> > > >  about
> the
> > > > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and
> in
> > > > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a
> "D"
> > > > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> > > about
> > > > its energy consumption.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact
> > in
> > > their statistics there.
> > >
> > > They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but
> that
> > > means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and
> have a
> > > positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is
> much
> > > lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in
> > any
> > > way.
> > >
> > > They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of
> > specific
> > > energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> 

Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Katherine Maher]

Hi all,

Thanks Lukas for bringing this back up. Since my name was mentioned, I'll
share some context, but I'm copying my colleague Juliet Barbara who is best
positioned to move this forward, as she is the current holder of our
relationship with Greenpeace.

The Comms, Finance, and COO teams met with Greenpeace in 2015 to discuss
the ways the WMF could improve our overall environmental footprint. The
Foundation already has some positive efforts underway formally and
informally - IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back, we
are transparent (if not overly proactive) in disclosure of energy
consumption, we have sensible policies around server efficiency and
hardware replacement, and we have pushed for clean energy alternatives for
our SF office consumption.

We are less effective in areas such as advocacy and purchasing (e.g.,
stating this is a priority for the movement, pushing our colos to provide
clean sources/mixes). Some of these are questions of scale and efficiency -
Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
based on scale alone.

At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
findings of this effort.

Katherine

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lukas Mezger 
wrote:

> Dear MZMcBride and Brion,
>
> Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.
>
> – I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
> environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
> went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
> cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.
>
> – In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
> about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.
>
> – It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
> but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
> renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
> commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
> endowment.
>
> – I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
> answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
> is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
> Maher) shared with Greenpeace.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Lukas / Gnom
>
> 2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :
>
> > On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> > >
> > > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project
> to
> > > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > > . The main idea
> is
> > > to
> > > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> > reason
> > > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> > >
> > > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> > >  about the
> > > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> > > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> > > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> > about
> > > its energy consumption.
> > >
> >
> > I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact
> in
> > their statistics there.
> >
> > They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
> > means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
> > positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
> > lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in
> any
> > way.
> >
> > They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of
> specific
> > energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> > usage or environmental impact.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> > > "Environmental
> > > impact " on
> Meta.
> > I
> > > have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the
> > Wikimedia
> > > Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia 

Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Dear MZMcBride and Brion,

Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.

– I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.

– In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.

– It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
endowment.

– I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
Maher) shared with Greenpeace.

Thanks again,

Lukas / Gnom

2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber :

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
> >
> > I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
> > reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> > . The main idea is
> > to
> > use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
> reason
> > for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> > environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
> >
> > My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
> >  about the
> > energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> > which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> > score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
> about
> > its energy consumption.
> >
>
> I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact in
> their statistics there.
>
> They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
> means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
> positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
> lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in any
> way.
>
> They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of specific
> energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
> usage or environmental impact.
>
>
> >
> > I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> > "Environmental
> > impact " on Meta.
> I
> > have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the
> Wikimedia
> > Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have
> received
> > positive responses.
> >
>
> Neat!
>
> -- brion
>
>
> >
> > In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
> > how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
> > figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
> >
> > Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy
> sources
> > can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
> > sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
> >
> > So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
> > better forum to discuss these questions?
> >
> > Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
> > your name to this list
> >  >.
> > Thank you.
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
> > ___
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> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Brion Vibber]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger 
wrote:

> Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
>
> I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
> reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
> . The main idea is
> to
> use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
> for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
> environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
>
> My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
>  about the
> energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
> which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
> score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness about
> its energy consumption.
>

I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact in
their statistics there.

They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in any
way.

They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of specific
energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
usage or environmental impact.


>
> I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
> "Environmental
> impact " on Meta. I
> have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
> Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
> positive responses.
>

Neat!

-- brion


>
> In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
> how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
> figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
>
> Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
> can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
> sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
>
> So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
> better forum to discuss these questions?
>
> Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
> your name to this list
> .
> Thank you.
> Kind regards,
>
> Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[MZMcBride]

Lukas Mezger wrote:
>I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
>reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
>. The main idea is
>to use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
>reason for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example
>for environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.

This issue has been discussed previously. I would recommend trawling
through the mailing list archives to find older discussions.

A somewhat cynical reply from May 2009:
.
I can't find the rest of that thread off-hand, but surely it's somewhere.

>In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
>how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
>figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.

There's been a greater push for transparency in the past few months. I
think what you want here from the Wikimedia operations team is a full
index of the particular hardware that's in use in the various data
centers. That would allow you or others to take this list of hardware and
research its energy use. Most of the hardware is off-the-shelf from Dell
and other companies, I believe, so information about its specifications,
including energy use, is likely already public.

MZMcBride



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[Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement

[Lukas Mezger]

Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,

I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
. The main idea is to
use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main reason
for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a great example for
environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.

My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
 about the
energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness about
its energy consumption.

I would very much like to change that and set up a page called "Environmental
impact " on Meta. I
have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the Wikimedia
Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have received
positive responses.

In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.

Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy sources
can be carried out on the operations side since the United States energy
sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.

So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
better forum to discuss these questions?

Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
your name to this list
.
Thank you.
Kind regards,

Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom 
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