back to article The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers

Welcome to the latest Register Debate in which writers discuss technology topics, and you the reader choose the winning argument. The format is simple: we propose a motion, the arguments for the motion will run this Monday and Wednesday, and the arguments against on Tuesday and Thursday. During the week you can cast your vote on …

  1. iowe_iowe

    its not where, but what.

    Maybe the question should be around what we're using vast exabytes of storage and teraflops of computing for. There must be loads of ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial) data doing nothing other than occupying storage. Plus vast server farms dedicated to crypto currency mining, using the equivalent power consumption of a medium sized country. Plus big tech harvesting, storing and processing thousands of data points on every connected person on the planet, solely to serve up tailored adverts. Plus all the "dark data" held by various govt agencies..

    No easy answer except to take personal ownership of your data and to keep it close, and jealously guarded. And bin out crypto.

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: its not where, but what.

      Yes - but changing those things is beyond the scope of "what do I do for my computing needs".

      And if you are renting services by compute power you have a direct incentive to minimise the compute power needed, rather that "oh we have a big underutilised server, what does it matter"

      1. Flywheel
        Thumb Up

        Re: its not where, but what.

        direct incentive to minimise the compute power needed

        I did that! I wanted a proxy server for my smallish setup so I tried it out on a local Raspberry Pi. It worked fine so I now rent a VPS of equivalent power (but the network interface is quicker). Cheap to rent, better for the environment.

        1. steviebuk Silver badge

          Re: its not where, but what.

          I'd say the Raspberry Pi is better for the environment as its low powered.

      2. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Linux

        Beyond the scope of "what do I do for my computing needs".

        In order to calculate the environmental impact of "what I do for my computing needs", I need to include the amount of power that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft et al spend rifling through the data I send them.

        If I don't use the cloud, then that rather large part of my personal carbon footprint becomes zero.

        And if I DID use the cloud, then I would STILL need many Gigabytes of RAM, many GFLOPs of CPU and indeed GFLOPs if not TFLOPs of GPU to run Win11 / Google Chrome / Facebook's latest VR Metaverse (cr)app, which spend so much energy on running 1000 javascript threads on every webpage, recording my every mouse-movement and eye-twitch, and rendering some shitty WebGL background that I never asked for, probably to try to sell me some advert for some piece of tat that I don't want.

        Luckily, I have Linux, I have NoScript/ScriptSafe, and I don't use Facebook. Therefore my CPU and GPU can relax and throttle down (Or indeed turn OFF! What a novel concept in this age of Windows Modern Suspend..) until I actually need them to run a game, or for my own computations on my own data that I wouldn't trust anyone's damned Cloud with.

        And don't tell me that running a game on someone else's computer and streaming it back to my monitor is in any way more 'green', except in terms of dollar bills for the people monetising the data.

      3. NoneSuch Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: its not where, but what.

        At the end of the day, I turn my workstation off. Zero electricity costs after that point.

        Cloud computing is on 24 / 7 / 365 with multiple redundant data centers on standby burning through multiple KWh of electricity regardless of who is on.

        There is no such thing as cloud computing, it's just someone elses computer. The fallacy that someone else can manage your hardware or software better than you has been proven wrong repeatedly. It's more expensive, it's less ecological and puts your critical data in the hands of another corporation.

        This misinformation is spread by companies like Microsoft who make billions in guaranteed revenue hosting other peoples data. Over time they are removing on prem options forcing you onto their hosted systems. It isn't a better business solution for you, but it does make Microsoft a massive profit.

        Over time, the MS accountants will get involved reducing staff and equipment quality over time while raising usage fees, once people no longer have on prem options, to improve their profitability at your expense ending in massive outages and trillions in losses. And everyone who falls for the "Cloud" horse dung marketing will deserve what they get.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      IT Angle

      Re: its not where, but what.

      Very good point.

      Also we collectively need to take a good hard look at the software stacks we run. They've become so bloated, over-layered and inefficient that we have to be wasting untold resources just running bad code.

      Just think of all the layers, products and frameworks a byte has to pass through from the network layer all the way to displaying a stupid emoji in a Teams chat.

      Quite horrific.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What was the question again?

    Oh yes... "Renting hardware on a subscription basis is bad for customers".

    While there's nothing wrong with the argument given here per se, it seems to be focused very tightly (exclusively, one might say) on climate/eco issues. Yes, they are a hot topic these days, but there are surely other issues to be addressed?

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: What was the question again?

      Exactly. We are in an industry where the data can't be stored in the cloud, so no choice.

      That said, PC and laptops are on around a 6-8 year cycle (my laptop is from 2018 and I don't reckon with it being replaced before 2024, unless it fails). My previous company mobile phone was 6 years old, when it got replaced, as long as they are getting security updates, I'm happy to keep using them, we only do email and Teams when out and about.

      Our servers usually go through extended support lifetimes, so, again 5 - 6 years in many cases. On a cost front, it is hard to justify cloud costs, compared with the normal lifetime of the servers.

      Plus, they are behind our firewall. If there is a data breach, we get it in the neck, whether it was our fault or our cloud providers... I'd rather have to pay for our mistakes than the mistakes of others.

    2. cyberdemon Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: What was the question again?

      Er yeah. This debate was fluffed because the title of the article is inconstent with the "proposition".

      Apparently if you Agree with the title "The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers" then you should vote AGAINST, but if you disagree, you should vote FOR. WTF?

      Did the Reg attend the Dominic Cummings & Vladimir Putin school of Electioneering?

      Anyway, my vote is: The cloud is BAD for both the environment AND my privacy, because it spends too many megawatts analysing all my surveillance data points, and trying to predict and influence my future behaviours.

      Long live customer-owned hardware with open source software that doesn't spend all its time spying on the data cow user.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge

        Re: What was the question again?

        And guess what: Thanks to the confusing definitions and ambiguous vote options, results so far are 52% in favour of the slurp-cloud (sponsored by Meta?) vs 48% against. Dom would be proud.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: What was the question again?

      "While there's nothing wrong with the argument given here per se, it seems to be focused very tightly (exclusively, one might say) on climate/eco issues. Yes, they are a hot topic these days, but there are surely other issues to be addressed?"

      Not to mention the security issues of running on shared hardware. If you use cloud and use exclusive hardware, then much of the so-called green advantage is lost. On a similar note, yeah, it's "easy" to scale up and down as required for those sudden short bursts of very high load. But where is that extra capacity coming from? Well, clearly the "cloud" has lots of spare, probably idle capacity. I'm sure they don't want contention issues where a client asks for more CPU cycles and gets told, "come back later, we don't have any spare during peak periods".

    4. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: What was the question again?

      "Yes, they are a hot topic these days, but there are surely other issues to be addressed?"

      I think the other considerations are much more important.

      If you run a company developing batteries for EV's, the risk of your whole R&D directory being copied could sink the company if it were sold to your competitors. Is it better to maintain your own servers or rely on a company a couple of magnitudes larger than yours to be diligent about security? That big company is going to be a much bigger target that your company may ever be. Beyond being able to monitor your security more closely, you have a chance of some obscurity as well. It's risk management. Even if the likelihood of a breach is low, if that breach will destroy the company, it's more important than a much more likely leak that has very little effect. I worked at an aerospace firm where we had to be mindful of ITAR requirements. A leak might be more severe for the higher ups including prison time.

      I don't think you'd ever find the formula for Coca Cola on a cloud server.

      If energy efficiency is a concern, providing everybody with a cutting edge gaming computer to fiddle spreadsheets isn't a good idea. The same goes for server capability. There are plenty of scaling schemes that dole out resources only as needed. It's great to have supercomputer speeds in the wee hours, but not a great use of power.

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Huge datacentres are built just to prop up the advertising industrial complex

    The client is going to be running and using power anyway. The solution isn't hiring your bit of the data centre to continually receive data from software running on clients and maybe serving up adverts to the client, the solution is producing software which doesn't require constant online tracking.

    1. Cuddles

      Re: Huge datacentres are built just to prop up the advertising industrial complex

      "The client is going to be running and using power anyway."

      More to the point of the articles argument, the client is going to exist anyway, which is a point that the article glossed over entirely. Yes, manufacturing hardware is environmentally bad, so having a shared pool with high utilisation might be better than everyone having their own device with overall lower utilisation. Except that everyone still needs their own device in order to access the shared pool, so there are now significantly more devices being manufactured. And the amount of stuff going into a PC is pretty similar regardless of how powerful it is, so cloud services inevitably mean more manufacturing.

      With sufficiently efficient data centres and low power thin clients, the power use could well come out ahead for cloud. But the article focussed on pollution and waste from manufacturing and replacement cycles, and that will certainly end up much worse since the cloud option requires more devices to be in use.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Huge datacentres are built just to prop up the advertising industrial complex

        "With sufficiently efficient data centres and low power thin clients, the power use could well come out ahead for cloud."

        Unless those thin clients have to get replaced more frequently because they were built without any upward potential.

        I have plenty of working hardware that is use limited due to changes outside my control. Come Feb, my current mobile won't be supported by AT&T any more and many more customers are also going to have to ditch phones that work just fine. My old Apple laptop's OS can't be upgraded any further so it doesn't have TLS 1.1 (or something). Utterly useless to browse the web with. I had been using it for Arduino stuff, but the show's over for that too. It has no resale value and there are dwindling usages for it. I've been careful with it and it looks and works just fine. At least my old Android phones wind up finding interesting second lives.

  4. wolfetone Silver badge

    I spend a lot of my free time messing around with old cars. Not often out of fun, but more to keep them on the road. They're relatively simple to fix, and as they work it reduces the need for me to replace them. If I take my old Corolla built in 1998, about every 6/7 years or 80,000 miles (which ever is first) it needs a new timing belt. The belt costs about £20, and it's a straightforward DIY job. From start to finish, changing the belt takes about 3 to 4 hours. If that belt breaks, it could result in a new engine*. The older a car gets, the more you rely on scrap yards to obtain an engine from, as an engine from the manufacturer is ridiculously expensive.

    A brand new Ford Fiesta has what is called a wet belt. It's still a timing belt but it's submerged in oil. This method of design is used in Ford's Ecoboost engines which are used on a number of vehicles, and have been for a number of years now. Some of these cars are now coming up to the point where they need to be changed. Such an arrangement has been present in Ford cars for about 8/9 years now, and are often found in their low emissions vehicles. The job to change this belt is no longer a DIY job, it's stated to take 16 hours and requires special tools that the home mechanic just won't have (a torque magnifier for example). Such is the labour cost of this, these vehicles will either have the engine changed with a new one, or the vehicle will be scrapped. If the vehicle is scrapped (more than likely, given that a new engine would be many hundreds of pounds) then the consumer/owner will then purchase a new vehicle. A new vehicle which has to be built and shipped to the country where the user is.

    Why am I talking about cars when we're on about the cloud? Well it's an example of the access the consumer has to repairing equipment they have, often equipment they rely on to work. New vehicles, much like new electronic devices, are provided to the consumer in ever more constricted ways to prevent the life of these objects from being extended. Sometimes by lack of parts, but more often than not what stops a consumer from using a device for longer is the complexity and cost of repair. I'm sure there will be a number of us here with memories of the big TV in the house going kaput, and being brought to a local chap who was able to fix it at a cost that didn't render the TV as scrap. Those people have practically vanished, as to them there is no money in it as the cost of repair outweighs the cost of replacement.

    Even now, many of us will be in situations where the companies we work for have provided our colleagues with laptops that are landfill when a component breaks. RAM is often soldered on to boards now. TPM chips are known to go pop and render the OS itself useless. Instead of swapping a stick of RAM or chip with a new one, we're often forced to purchase a new motherboard. Even then, if the laptop is only 2 years old, cost of a new motherboard will often be more (or at least relatively equal) with the cost of a new laptop. So what happens? A new laptop is purchased as it doesn't make financial sense to fix the one we have. That isn't the company accountant setting the tone - it's manufacturers.

    What's more is that there is an incessant need from cloud providers to sell themselves to us as problem solvers. Right now as I write this, I've seen an advert for an Alexa integrated coffee machine, with everyone going "Alexa make me a coffee". Except, Alexa doesn't put the cup in the machine. So you need to do that. And you still need to put the coffee pod in the machine. So all the Alexa integration has done to make the coffee making process easier is that it's taken away the need for the user to press a button. That's all it's done. Even with this, it wasn't even a week ago where Tesla drivers were locked out of their own vehicle from a network issue relating to Tesla's cloud operations. Instead of a physical key which rarely goes wrong, a cloud solution involving the internet and your phone is seen as better. Remember, of course, the internet and your phone are both liable to breakdown more often than a physical key.

    In a very long way, what I'm saying is this: Cloud services, the incessant need for connectivity, the relative ease of companies to cut features using the cloud unless there is an equipment upgrade forced upon the consumer, the incessant need for equipment to rely on cloud services where there is no guarantee of 100% uptime or issue-free service, is creating landfill and driving the need for constant consumer equipment upgrades.

    Let's cut the shit about the cloud being the saviour of the environment, with it's sheer presence meaning your laptop just isn't needed. The cloud is looking for problems to solve, and is often creating solutions for problems no one had. If you really, truly, cared about the environment - you would allow us to fix our equipment easily and at an acceptable cost. It's the one problem the world has that the cloud can't solve, and if it could, it would be the saviour of the environment.

    *engines are, largely in Toyota's, non-interference. Meaning if the timing belt snaps on my Corolla it'll just stop working. But could then have a new belt fitted and the "timing" of the engine set back to what it should be. Not all manufacturers do this, like Ford, where their engines are interference. So when a belt breaks on those engines as I mentioned, catastrophic damage will occur often rendering the engine a glorified boat anchor

    1. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Not just that

      "So all the Alexa integration has done to make the coffee making process easier is that it's taken away the need for the user to press a button."

      It does something much more valuable than that - it tells Amazon every time you make coffee so they can target you with ads for refill pods.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Not just that

        And for those who have various disabilities what it has done is allow them to make coffee... not such a small thing any more.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not just that

          Are you sure?

          As per the posting above, all it does it save you pressing a button. You still have to fill it with pods (pods made and shipped at great monetary and environmental cost!), dispose of used pod, fill it with water, place and withdraw a cup from it. If someone can manage all that with a disability but not be able to press a button (which, lets face it, could be modified by anyone with the slightest technical competency to a big red external button or foot switch or bump switch) then I would be impressed.

          As second poster points out, all it means is that Amazon/Google/Whoever get to know how many coffees you drink and when.

          An no doubt the coffee machine in questions needs to have wi-fi access, security updates, finite lifespan while the manufacturer supports it, some cloudy sever running somewhere, and has a quiescent power consumption several watts higher than a normal coffee machine.

          What a load of bollocks mankind is getting swamped in.

          1. SundogUK Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            I'm not.

          2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            People are strange.

            So Scotland had an attack of the weather. People have been without electricity most of a week. The dear'ol Bbc has been examining the human cost. One person had been unable to brush their teeth because their toothbush was flat. I had to think about that till realising they had a power brush, not a dependable collection of plastic powered by ATP.

            But that'll get more fun with EV mandates, and an inability to charge those. And heat, given decarbonisation means more reliance on electricity.

            Greens are strange.

            Especially when the pro-cloud argument seems to be it's good for the environment. Even though clouds feed from the same generating mix as on-prem servers. And a large datacenter would be a large energy user, so expected to pay more to subsidise carbon traders and wind farmers.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: Not just that

              "But that'll get more fun with EV mandates, and an inability to charge those. And heat, given decarbonisation means more reliance on electricity."

              The petrol station won't be able to pump fuel if they have no power. With an EV, you have options that you don't have with a petrol or diesel car.

          3. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            I was commenting on the overall attitude of "I don't need this user aid, so it's a waste", not the specific machine.

            It's like my washing machine having the capacity to connect to a network - I can't figure out why anyone would want/need that (potentially useful for a laundrette to monitor usage and get notified of failures by the machine I suppose). However, it almost certainly adds next to no cost to the machine, and if it useful to even a very small minority then I don't have an issue with it being there *as an option*.

            I have friends whose lives have been made massively easier by alexa.

            I have had my life massively improved by things as trivial as keyless entry to a vehicle (something I used to dismiss as a gimmick).

          4. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            "An no doubt the coffee machine in questions needs to have wi-fi access, security updates, finite lifespan........."

            And when they are ready to ship Coffee Maker v3.5, it will use pods that don't work with your Coffee Maker v2.2. The CM v2.2 pods will be discontinued. They will also have a super rudimentary DRM RFID chip in them so a third party company will be breaking the law if they circumvent it. The DMCA in the US has been an excellent weapon for large companies. The summary is that when the company wants to sell you a new coffee maker, you won't have a choice.

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Not just that

          Please tell me what disability means you can't press a button, but you can still load cups and pods into a device the button is on. If the device had an automatic loader so they could advance it without touching it, then you might have a point (though in any case you still have to have a method for them to retrieve their coffee when it's done), but it sounds like this doesn't have an industrial new cup supply belt.

          Disability is a good example of the usefulness of a lot of this tech that's often mocked, but it doesn't always apply.

          1. mkaibear

            Re: Not just that

            >Please tell me what disability means you can't press a button, but you can still load cups and pods into a device the button is on.

            Someone who has a carer come in a couple of hours a day? They can leave it set up with a new pod ready to go the next time you want coffee. Then you can choose when you have it by asking Alexa.

            1. Roland6 Silver badge

              Re: Not just that

              >Someone who has a carer come in a couple of hours a day?

              If getting up or reaching out to press a button is too much then said person will have problems picking up a hot cup and sipping a hot drink.

              If you need carers then you have bigger problems than not being able to press a button on a coffee maker.

              1. TRT Silver badge

                Re: Not just that

                Previously, in preparing a cup of coffee but unable to reach the sugar bowl, the Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three may have evolved into something with far longer arms, but which was probably quite incapable of drinking the coffee.

          2. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            Anything which limits the amount of walking and standing you can do in a day.

            You can get a coffee made, then go to the machine, get the cup and load the next pod.

            You only make one trip per coffee, not two. And yes that *is* important to lots of people.

            1. Roland6 Silver badge

              Re: Not just that

              >You can get a coffee made, then go to the machine, get the cup and load the next pod.

              Alternatively, you could move the coffee machine so that it is within your reach when at your desk...

          3. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Not just that

            "Disability is a good example of the usefulness of a lot of this tech that's often mocked, but it doesn't always apply."

            The thing is that there are already many products to help people with various disabilities and none of them require a connection to the internet or track data about the user.

            The excuses for some things are really reaching. Yes, if I could see inside my fridge to see if I have some single cream or not while I'm at the store keeps me from buying more that may go bad before use, but it also means I'm doing a poor job of planning ahead. I'm also wasting resources just so I can look inside the fridge remotely. Instead, I have a shopping list on my phone and put things on it as needed. Having a connected oven seems really bizarre to me. Do I put in food to cook in the morning and ring up the oven to start the meal an hour before I expect to get home? Is it a good idea to leave food in the oven all day? I don't think so. My solution is to decide what I'm going to have and have it prepped and in the fridge so it's ready to pop in the oven when I get home. My fear is that I forget I loaded the oven and stop for take away and a day or two later try to figure out what that smell is.

            The same reasoning goes on with cloud services. They sell you on the idea that you may suddenly need to access your data from the other side of the globe or need massively more horsepower to run an application. Oddly enough, this have never happened to me. All of my financial software and data can live encrypted on my computer and if I have to wait a few more minutes to process a complicated report, I'll go make a cup of tea.

            I'm typing this on my laptop rather than firing up my production machine. It's a factor of about 12 in power consumption. Since I pay for my own electricity, I keep a close eye on usage. When I need to do more complex tasks, I use the bigger box to keep my tea drinking moderated.

        3. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: Not just that

          Really, how does it put the cup & pod in?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tesla locking....

      "Remember, of course, the internet and your phone are both liable to breakdown more often than a physical key."

      Not to mention that the internet, the phone and Tesla servers are all gobbling power 24/7, just to do this for you. My 25 y/o car with a purely mechanical key takes no power whatsoever, and even my 14 y/o car with a traditional RF keyfob probably has less quiescent battery drain on the receiver waiting for a unlock command than a Tesla does with it celluar and wifi modems waiting for the same command.

      Oh yeah, that's a 14 y/o car with 300,000 miles on the clock. Obviously built to last for a while and not be scrapped and replaced or economically unviable to repair by the time it has reached 100,000.

      1. Snowy Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Tesla locking....

        Tesla Model S has two sets of batteries one for the system and the other to run the motors. If you do not use the car for a while even if you leave it plugged in the system battery will go flat and you can not operate the car without dismantle part of it to recharge that battery.

        James May's Tesla Model S did fail with it a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsKwMryKqRE

    3. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Linux

      TPM chips are known to go pop and render the OS itself useless.

      This OS was useless from the start.

      Would anyone buy a car on a buy+rent model where you pay 50+ grand up-front for the car, but also need to take out a £500/month subscription and accept regular over-the-air updates to critical and non-critical functionality, all the while signing an agreement that the manufacturer will remotely brick the car if you stop paying?

      Er yes, apparently certain mugs will fall for this. They buy Tesla cars and Samsung mobile phones.

      And before you whinge "But I don't pay a subscription for my samsung mobe or my tesla vehicle": Yes you do. You pay with your data. Stop sending your highly valuable surveillance data to Samsung/Tesla/Microsoft/Amazon/Google, and you have bought a brick.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      re. RAM is often soldered on to boards now

      correction: RAM is ALMOST ALWAYS soldered on to boards now.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: re. RAM is often soldered on to boards now

        correction: RAM is ALMOST ALWAYS soldered on to boards now.

        Nah - a good portion of the time it's in the same package as the CPU.

    5. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      -- I'm sure there will be a number of us here with memories of the big TV in the house going kaput, and being brought to a local chap who was able to fix it at a cost that didn't render the TV as scrap.--

      I'm older than that - I remember taking the back off to see which valve wasn't glowing, taking it down the local electronics shop and poking around to find a replacement, plugging it back in and the TV working again.

      1. John Sager

        Um. Most valve tellys had series heaters (Mullard 0.3A P series). One went pop and they all went off...

    6. TRT Silver badge

      Myself, I've often wondered where the advancement is in having an app controlled power washer.

  5. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Simplistic argument

    Once data centre power management has become commodified, it doesn't really matter where that data centre is. The important thing is having it managed for power efficiency and while this may inevitably involve some form of outsourcing, it doesn't mean relocating. Missing from this argument are the not inconsiderable costs of providing highspeed connectivity. For your own data: sovereignty, security and speed should be key factors.

  6. amacater

    There's a carbon cost in transferring your data to and fro - it may not be much: it's cheaper for me to keep a local machine running to point machines at for Linux updates than it is to point 6 x machines at "the Net" - it's cer4tainly faster if it's on the local loop. Updates to that machine transfer minimum data - but there is the cost of keeping 4x disks spinning.

    Paying for data transfer is the killer, I think, for bulk data. You pay once to transfer it and many times to access it. Silly example: Spotify used AWS then moved off and back to a cloud better under their own control. And I can't force a cloud provider to use power-effective hardware.

  7. Clausewitz 4.0
    Devil

    There is no Cloud

    It is just someone's else computers.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: There is no Cloud

      This never gets old and should never be forgotten.

  8. ThatOne Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Cloud is good for you - Really folks?

    Marketing stops from nothing, does it.... Now the green argument, fallacious as possible since obviously a "Cloud" infrastructure isn't much eco-friendlier than the same one on premises. Unlike the marketing blurb tries to suggest computing resources don't magically spring to life on demand, and return to nothing when temporarily not used: The server(s) running those instances is always running, no matter how many VMs they currently run.

    Cloud has one single advantage: Flexibility. You don't need to invest in hard/software only to find out you need more/less (or not anymore), you just pay for what you need, for as long as you need it. On the other hand it has a slew of drawbacks everyone here knows, so it's clearly not a silver bullet solution, and it definitely won't save the planet...

    What's next? Cloud saves children from abuse?

    1. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: Cloud is good for you - Really folks?

      Cloud saves children from abuse?

      Of course it does. All you data can be analysed at leisure in the cloud and anything of value can be hold against you now or in the future.

      1. ThatOne Silver badge

        Re: Cloud is good for you - Really folks?

        Sure, but what does that have to do with specifically children abuse?

        Nothing actually. I'm talking about the hollow, imperious "somebody think of the children already", don't-deny, don't-discuss argument, which unfortunately is very popular and used over and over each time somebody needs to make all dissent disappear.

        My point was about the (ab)use of fallacious "appeal to emotion" arguments used to back up irrelevant products: "Drink our beer, or are you a pedo?"

  9. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Embedded?

    So how do I get the “cloud” to talk to the board I’m working on over an i2c interface?

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Embedded?

      very... very... very slowly

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Embedded?

        Shouldn't that be uuencoded and then converted to modem blips and blurts?

  10. doublelayer Silver badge

    So what hardware is this debate about

    Today's article focused quite narrowly. It only talked about the climate benefits of renting hardware, and it only talked about servers. That makes some sense as the servers are equipment where the renting option is likely to have a climate benefit, but the previous debate article mostly talked about desktops and finance. So what hardware are we going to rent or buy here? Is it just everything the IT department ever sees?

    This is an important issue in the functioning of this debate. If we're actually talking about desktops, even as part of the argument, then we can't jump to a "be green, rent" solution. Rented desktops don't use less power than purchased ones, they don't use less materials in construction, they are likely to be transported more, and they may be replaced more often than an owned one which increases the pace of waste electronics. This environmental argument could therefore be twisted to represent the opposite side of the debate. In a good debate, the debaters understand what they disagree about and they make this clear to the audience.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: So what hardware is this debate about

      "they may be replaced more often than an owned one which increases the pace of waste electronics."

      This happens. I have clients in both camps. Those leasing their laptops/desktops get them replaced after 5 years. Those buying them take the 5 year on-site warrenty, but after 5 years, keep using them until they break. The broken ones are then piled in boxes and used as spares where possible. New ones are then bought as required in smaller batches. At least one client has told me they have a very few 10 year old laptops still out in the field, still adequate for some users. They are planning on leaving the Win 11 "upgrade" for as long as possible! For normal Win10 business use, kit too old to be upgraded to Win 11 is still more than adequate for most users. They are seriously looking at options to support both Win10 and 11 long term eventually, if MS will let them remain on Win10 without stupid "extended support" costs.

  11. nautica Silver badge
    WTF?

    What kind of sleazeball, low-rent, clickbait tricks are you trying to pull, El Buidro?

    OK, Reg, perhaps you can explain to us great unwashed exactly what the difference is between the two supposedly different articles shown below.

    Oh...OOOhhh...I've got it: they have different titles, and dates, and authors---but the second 'author' already appeared in the earlier---Monday---version. Of COURSE this makes them totally different!

    "Renting IT hardware on a subscription basis is bad for customers"

    "We're back with another debate you can vote on as we argue back and forth – this time over cloud computing"

    Dominic Connor

    Mon 29 Nov 2021 // 10:45 UTC

    https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/29/register_debate_hardware_subs/

    "The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers"

    "From the data centre to the desktop, here is the green solution"

    Anne Currie Tue 30 Nov 2021 // 10:45 UTC

    https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/30/register_debate_hardware_subs_tues_against1/

    1. Cuddles

      Re: What kind of sleazeball, low-rent, clickbait tricks are you trying to pull, El Buidro?

      "OK, Reg, perhaps you can explain to us great unwashed exactly what the difference is between the two supposedly different articles shown below."

      Um, are you not familiar with the concept of a debate? The difference between the two articles is that one is arguing in favour of a particular statement, while the other is arguing against it. Various people have commented on the competence of the voting system and the merits of the various arguments made so far, but I think you're the only confused about the basic concept.

      1. nautica Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Re: What kind of sleazeball, low-rent, clickbait tricks are you trying to pull, El Buidro?

        Um, are you not familiar with the very valuable concept of "reading comprehension"?

        It's pretty hard. First, you have to actually READ what you comment about.

  12. steviebuk Silver badge

    Charton Heston

    Was a knob. But in the words of him while I hold my PC, laptop and backup hard drives in the air (cloud is too expensive)

    "From my cold dead hands"

    1. aregross
      Mushroom

      Re: Charton Heston

      I was just about to post that same thing!

      ...and that goes for my ICE car too!

      BOOM!

  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    WTF?

    What is this bullshit ?

    "If you’re managing your own, the first question to ask yourself is, are you Google, Microsoft, or AWS? "

    Oh, because of course, Google, Borkzilla and AWS are the gold standard in five nines availability ? Um, no.

    And, obviously, the three are also paragons of data protection and always ensure your data remains yours ? Um, no.

    Does the author of this piece have shares in all three providers ? If so, why did he not partake in IBM's cloud (it has one, FYI) ?

    The Cloud (TM) has its utility, no argument there. But to pretend that everyone should just go and and rent a cloud server instead of managing things themselves is to beat a very particular marketing drum.

    There are many companies that have been managing five nines, even before The Cloud (TM) existed. They're still doing so, and The Cloud (TM) still can't.

    Come back with your bullshit PR argument the day The Cloud (TM) can.

  14. heyrick Silver badge

    Bullshit to the cloud

    My place of work has part cloud and part "data in head office".

    What they didn't have, today, was a working phone line thanks to "a situation" a mile and a half away involving a truck and a tractor (the tractor won).

    So the people paid to sit staring at a screen all day had to go find some real work to do, and all of the stock inventory (stuff in, stuff out) was written down on paper and god knows if that will be entered into the system correctly when it comes back up. As for traceability, who knows? The barcode readers couldn't read the barcodes as the back end couldn't talk to head office or the cloud or Mars or whatever the hell the data is actually stored. And as for putting tracing codes on stuff? Forget it. No data access, no codes. And we can't simply stop as the workforce is a hundred and fifty odd and it's coming up to Christmas, so a missed day would be felt.

    Now, if the data was held, say, on site and synced with head office, then maybe just maybe it wouldn't be a massive clusterfuck simply because the modem is blinking its little red indicator of woe.

  15. ecofeco Silver badge

    The cloud?

    You mean those giant watt-gobbling data centers that I have no control over? Yeah, that's sssooo much more efficient. /s

  16. DerekCurrie
    Go

    Two concerns: Function and Security

    If your company bothers to use and keep up with current security methods, then keep your data to yourself! Don't trust it to anyone else. That of course means, among other strategies, that you adequately encrypt all your data and keep an ongoing up-to-date copy offline, away from your facility and the possibility of ransomware attacks. Good luck finding companies that even know what I'm talking about.

    If real security at your company is either wishful thinking or utterly hopeless, you might as well let someone else take responsibility, thus rent-a-terminal and data stored off somewhere else. Theoretically, this keeps away the ransomware because the terminals are limited to only their function. No personal stuff allowed, no infection of the distant servers allowed.

    IOW: YES and NO. It's all a matter of circumstance. Do the usual: (1) ID your problems (2) Brainstorm the best solutions (3) implement (4) Verify quality of success (a step the lazy ignore) (5) Repeat the process on a continual basis. (And again, the lazy forget about continual evaluation, to their detriment).

  17. pnunn

    Total marketing BS

    This is pure marketing crap being peddlede by the groups that are scared you might actually work out how much money they are going to make by this BS. Along with the accountants that have been sold this rubbish and are too thck to know better.

    Apparently because it comes out of OpEx rather than CapEx its free money.

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: Total marketing BS

      It *is* total marketing BS. Logic dictates that, for a specific load, an equivalent server designed for load(X) at location(A) will use the same resources as when moved to location(B).

      A cloud server does not magically use less electricity to process a load than an in-house server. The cloud server may have more cores to process more threads, and therefore load-share across more users, but each process thread will take the same amount of electricity to process if they are done on the same manufacturing process with the same efficiency.

      And, if one thinks about it holistically, it may actually be that the cloud server may actually use more resources, as many server farms are now water cooled, requiring electrical pumps, whilst many on-site servers are air cooled and, if not using servers at all, desktops may be installed in environments that do not need additional environmental controls at all beyond what is being done to keep the humans comfortable anyway. That cloud server farm is most likely in a custom-designed building, with expensive infrastructure brought to it en mass, serviced independently of human need (roads maintained, property secured and cleaned, lighting, etc) PLUS add in the resource overhead of all the switches, routers, maintenance and processors necessary to get them connected to the outside world.

      Don't go making an utterly ridiculous "Cloud will save the environment!!" unless you can factually prove this for the vast majority of implementations. Which, you CAN'T.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Total marketing BS

        "do not need additional environmental controls at all beyond what is being done to keep the humans comfortable anyway. "

        Not really. Those computers still add a heat load to the environment that makes the HVAC work harder. HVAC designers take into account office equipment and the expected number of people as people can be characterized by the amount of heat they generate. It could be more efficient to water cool a server rack and reject the heat outside. It doesn't make any sense to do that for desktop computers. The cost of the plumbing would be far more than any savings.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From the data centre to the desktop, here is the green solution

    to paraphrase an old saying by a long-dead poet:

    Whenever I hear 'green solution', I release the safety on my Browning! - and not in the context of environmental disaster, etc. But hey, I'm just an old, bitter man who can visualise a tsunami of 'brainstorming sessions' held by the finest bullshitting minds (aka marketing department), working on how to jump on the GREEN!!! bandwagon at minimal cost, and - bonus awaits - for no cost at all! Better still, this is a great, great opportunity to improve current margins under the cloak of GREEN!!!

  19. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Interesting

    2 days of objections from us commentards, and not a word of explanation or justification from the author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting

      well, arguably it was a clickbaity devil's advocate submission... Not that this debate, argument, or anything, matters in the least, decisions are made elsewhere.

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Interesting

      Perhaps it was dropped in here to judge how well such marketing crap would be received.

      Now the hapless author needs to find a clever way to tell his sugar daddy "don't, nobody is buying it".

  20. Tom 7

    Really?

    In summer the PV on the roof covers the power consumed by the computing and more.

    In winter the power consumed by computing helps warm the building and warm water for wash rooms.

    With fibre broadband encrypted storage at employees houses provides off site.

  21. Binraider Silver badge

    The world is geared to generate data, but information is harder to come by. Storage is comparatively cheap over burning employee time to organise and dispose of garbage.

    It doesn't take a genius to work out that if the cost-benefit doesn't stack up, then people won't make the time.

    If I read this article correctly; the cost-benefit balance may be shifting, and perhaps; collecting exabytes of logs to predict what advert to send out next is perhaps not a good use of electricity.

    Reading the excellent Net Zero by Dieter Helm at the moment; and the argument made for "polluter pays" is strong. By polluter, that means, consumer. One less server rack, one less carbon payment. Can't really fault that argument.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      "The world is geared to generate data, but information is harder to come by. Storage is comparatively cheap over burning employee time to organise and dispose of garbage."

      It depends on the wheat/chaff ratio. One company I worked for had huge amounts of garbage in the SVN system and I spent the time to purge things from the active directory and organize data as a form of self defense. I was spending way too much time trying to find information or just to determine if it was there or not. In the process, I made some templates for the next two projects and built a company training document about where to commit files and what sort of files to commit. I couldn't count how many "untitled" spreadsheets I had to purge that somebody made to run some what ifs that didn't have any labels, dates, nothing to determine what they were for. The person just set up their client to commit everything and stick it all in one directory or another. Getting all of the work done let me find if we had a BOM on a module (we used SVN for hardware docs too). If one didn't exist, I'd make one (from a template that was also defined in company training manuals).

  22. johnnyblaze

    It's all bull

    Call it what you want, the truth is that average Joe, the small guy, the consumer etc are being fingered as the root cause of the climate problem. We're the issue apparently - so we need to buy expensive EV's and heat pumps, we need to recycle more and put all our data in the cloud. I'll tell you for sure, it's all bull. The consumer (as we are) has little choice in most things they do. The way things are designed or sold or packaged - we just have to go with the flow. It's the manufacturers that are the problem - the suppliers, the shipping companies, the total waste of packaging used to ship things, the wasted compute cycles in cloud datacenters where they analyze and process my latest photo with AI or churn over the last URL I visited to decide what ads to send me, or monitor every location I've been EVER been to give me a useless timeline if I want to view it (I don't). So much wasted time and energy which all leads to unnecessary pollution and CO2 on a scale a million, million times more than average Joe ever produces in a lifetime. The public are being manipulated into believing they now have to spend even more of their money to make things right - that £20k ICE car you had your eye on is now a £30k EV that has actually produced 70% more CO2 during manufacture than the petrol car, and you'll need to drive it at least 50k+ miles just to break even on cost and emissions, but don't worry, the battery will be useless in 5 years, so you'll have to buy a new EV to replace it, and so the cycle goes on. Stop blaming the consumer!!!

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: It's all bull

      The place I work throws out more plastic waste per shift than I do in a year.

      About 220 days, multiplied by two. 440. And about 150 staff. See where I'm going with this?

      Plastic waste is bad, but FFS the problem is NOT supermarket carrier bags.

    2. Binraider Silver badge

      Re: It's all bull

      The point you make here is true and requires evolution of how you charge for "damaging" actions. "Polluter Pays" as a principle means that if you evaluate and display the true end-to-end carbon cost of items and tax it accordingly you can move decision making in a way that it directs informed decisions. This is something that simply isn't done right now e.g. carbon cost of beef >> vegetables. But price per kg product versus price per kg CO2 shows how distorted the market is.

      At another extreme, I am very tempted to get an idiot V8 muscle car while one still can. EV right now makes absolutely no sense for me (rare, long-range driving requirement - I bike the rest of the time). The other half, on the other hand, regular; but short range requirement. Perfect EV situation (apart from capital cost of an EV that you would be seen dead in).

      Of course carbon tax does not equate to investment in renewables, which is IMO the root of the problem in implementing a plan to change societies course. The decentralisation of power runs counter to making able to make large scale direction change.

      No country can really go such a change alone either. Globalisation can be a force for good, and bad when wielded appropriately. COP26, if nothing else, shows which players in the game are on which side.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: It's all bull

        "Of course carbon tax does not equate to investment in renewables, which is IMO the root of the problem in implementing a plan to change societies course."

        What it does is shift more polluting heavy industries to other countries. The problem there is the country you might be in will no longer be able to make steel or other very basic materials. Those materials will have to be shipped across the planet creating more pollution and concentrating the source pollution in a very few discrete locations. The bottom line is that pollution is going to happen one way or the other. It's not like steel production is going away. The only way methods will be found to reduce emissions is when there is no longer a way to move production someplace with lower or negotiable ($$) standards.

        I'm not "green". But, I am happy to adopt practices that are less polluting if there is a financial reward. The trick is for the managers to keep the tricksters from gaming the system. Maybe I'm mildly green since I abhor throwing away things that still work just fine or can be repaired. My waffle iron is around 50 years old and a hand-me-down from my father. It''s had two new power cables in its life. These days it would be cheaper to buy a new waffle iron at China's retail outlet (Walmart) than to take it to a repair shop, but since I can do the work myself with a cable I've salvaged from something truly broken, I'm zero out of pocket. Do we really need a war for people to thing "make and mend" again.

  23. imanidiot Silver badge
    Mushroom

    passive agressive bullshit

    What the heck is with this passive aggressive writing style? I see it pop up more and more and it just rubs me the wrong way. "It's my way or the highway", "if you disagree, you're just stupid and don't understand"... Uhmm, no. I'm perfectly capable of forming my own mind when given the arguments. I don't need you to tell me exactly what to think.

    "If you’re managing your own, the first question to ask yourself is, are you Google, Microsoft, or AWS? If yes, fill yer boots. If not, what are you playing at? You might as well be repeatedly punching your grandchildren in the face."

    Why are you assuming that A: people working for Google, Microsoft or AWS are somehow magically more competent and better skilled at managing computer equipment than anybody else (They aren't), B: that ONLY these 3 big players are somehow magically more capable of efficiently utilizing hardware than anyone else, C: That the reader is a booger-brained troglodite incapable of managing his own hardware utilization and cost amortized over the lifetime of said hardware, D: That I have or will ever have grandchilren, or that I possibly have reasons to WANT to punch them repeatedly in the face, E: That there is no way for the company the reader owns or works for is incapable of utilizing hardware to the point where even the added cost of "carbon-credits" is far offset by any risk presented by just giving any and all company data to an external cloud host.

    Honestly, this article makes me want to buy a closet full of Pentium 4s and very old GPU's with 2000W power supplies trying to (and failing to) mine bitcoin, just as a figurative repeated punch in the face of the grandchildren of the writer of this article. The "hollier than thou" attitude REALLY doesn't sit well with me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: passive agressive bullshit

      Rather than the (your) company at fault I interpret this to be less wasteful because of overheads, if every SME needs 15% headroom over expected peak loads for future growth - across the whole diversified market that's a lot of waste, but for say AWS, 15% is probably onboarding their 1000 biggest users again, all in one day, so they can have a more manageable, say 3%.

      That adds up a lot and is a potential benefit to centralisation.

      Obviously I pulled those numbers out of thin air and do not love the all things cloud attitude, but I can see a benefit there.

      AC because you seem very, very angry!

  24. kuchev

    It's a skewed agrument

    This argument looks at only one very specific use of hardware rental - renting from public cloud providers. What about desktops, laptops, Chromebooks, thin clients, mobile devices? HP, Dell, etc., will lease them to you which is a form of rental. Should I buy them or rent them? Environmental impact is the same. I need physical switches and routers. Cisco will lease them to me. Should I buy them or rent them? Use cloud is the easy answer. What about everything else that cannot go to a cloud provider for whatever reason?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Global warming is a scam - get over it.

    If it's cold, global warming. If it's hot, it's global warming. If there are more storms, global warming. Less (there are), global warming. More trees (there are), global warming.

    The same idiots that have botched everything on the pandemic with hysteria, lock downs, mask and vaccine mandates can surely be trusted to figure out our energy needs in the future with complex and unreliably alternative energy that is all made in China

    The CCP thanks you for your mindless service.

  26. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

    Are we talking about ...

    ... data storage or processing in the cloud? Because I see these as being two different things. Most of my data storage just sits there, requiring very little (if any) energy to maintain. Occasionally, I may have to peruse my porn archive ... er, I mean business records. But it's not like a bunch of big SQL tables that get hit repeatedly. My processing needs are also pretty variable. Occasionally the odd video game, with it's power hungry GPU. But most other stuff can run adequately on an RPi. Or an old laptop.

    "For end-user devices, the amount of carbon released during their manufacturing swamps the CO2 from the electricity used to run them. That’s because users are crap at looking after hardware and their phones and tablets break or get chucked away way too early in their life cycles. However, we can’t entirely blame users. Hardware management is non-trivial, and working devices too often have to be binned because of the end of security support."

    But here, I can upgrade the bits that need to remain current for the latest Windows 11 installation. And keep other stuff around, running 32 bit processors with old versions of Linux (or even an XP box hiding in my PLC lab). I'd venture a guess that I cycle through a lot less hardware than cloud services' data centers do. Where they need to keep their server racks up to date for the latest stuff a user might want to run.

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