This document discusses strategies for data-intensive science in a carbon constrained world due to climate change. It argues that while efforts to reduce emissions are no longer sufficient, data and computing will be critical to adapt to climate impacts. However, the growth of data and computing also contributes to emissions. The document examines how climate change will impact weather patterns, droughts, and energy systems. It also looks at how internet and research networks can help support science and education for adaptation, such as through brokered green clouds, software-defined networks, wireless networks, dynamic optical networks, and eScience platforms. The goal is to address data and collaboration needs while reducing emissions and adapting to climate disruptions.

1. NREN strategies for Data-Intensive
Science in a Carbon Constrained
World
Bill St. Arnaud
Bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted all material in this slide deck may be reproduced,
modified or distributed without prior permission of the author

2. Theme of this talk
• We have already lost the battle to save the planet from extreme
climate change. Rather than focusing on reducing energy
consumption, (Mitigation) we now need to focus on surviving
climate change (Adaptation)
• Explosion of data and energy consumption by computers and
networks is contributing to energy demand and CO2 emissions
• But big data and science will be critical as move to focus on
adapting to climate change
• How can Internet and IT help us build NRENs and support science
and education that can adapt to global warming?

3. Changing NREN
networking environment
• Global Virtual Research Communities
• Increasing co-operation between public and private
researchers
• Rapidly changing users demands
• Increasing potential of commercial ICT-service providers
• Education: any time, any place, any device
• Citizen Science and M2M communications and sensors
• The disappearing campus IT & diminishing expertise in ICT
centres of connected institutions

4. Although there is less news coverage
global warming has not disappeared

5. Half of US experienced record
droughts or deluges in 2011
2010 warmest year ever – we
are only at the start of the
curve of the hockey stick. The
worst is yet to come

6. Blame it on Canada
How warming in the Arctic affects weather in Louisiana
• Warming Arctic slowing down jet stream
• Basic Thermodynamics - polar temperatures
drive the jet stream,
– There’s been a 20 percent drop in the zonal
wind speeds.
• As get stream slows down, it leads to those
bigger kinks in the jet stream.
– That amplification is associated with
persistent weather patterns that lead to
“extremes” like drought, flooding and heat
waves.
• Those slow-moving, persistent waves of
weather energy may have played a role in the
big snows that hammered parts of the West
last winter, as well as some of the extreme
winter weather that hit South West US and
Europe
• http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/01/14/
global-warming-revenge-of-the-atmosphere/
6

7. Climate Forecasts
• MIT report predicts median
temperature forecast of 5.2°C
– 11°C increase in Northern Canada
& Europe
– http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.p
hp?publication_id=990
MIT
• Last Ice age average global
temperature was 5-6°C cooler than
today
– Most of Canada & Europe was
under 2-3 km ice
• Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific
findings reveal global climate
disruption to be worse, and
progressing more rapidly, than
expected.
• http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Freud
enburg_2010_ASC.pdf

8. Future Droughts
• Palmer Drought Severity Index,
or PDSI.
• The most severe drought in
recent history, in the Sahel region
of western Africa in the 1970s, had
a PDSI of -3 or -4.
• By 2030 Western USA could see
-4 to -6. Drought in Texas clearly
caused by global warming:
http://goo.gl/QjHRS
• By 2100 some parts of the U.S.
and Latin America could see -8 to -
10 PDSI, while Mediterranean
areas could see drought in the -15
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39741525/ns/us_new
or -20 range. s-environment/

9. Dramatic changes in precipitation
• Every continent has suffered record rainfalls
• Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a
thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and
storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest
landslides Brazil has ever seen.
• Observed increase in precipitation in the last few
decades has been due in large part to a
disproportionate increase in heavy and extreme
precipitation rates which are exceeding
predictions made in models

10. New Challenge: Climate Adaptation
• Obama’s National Science Advisor John Holdren
“Mitigation alone won’t work, because the climate is
already changing, we’re already experiencing
impacts….A mitigation only strategy would be
insanity,”
• Equal emphasis given to adaptation – avoiding the
unmanageable, and adaptation – managing the
unavoidable.”
• Obama’s Climate Adaptation Executive Order
– http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1tU8go/www.good.is/post/obama-s-secret-climate-adaptation-plan/

11. Climate Change Impact on Internet
and NRENs
• UK Government study Climate Change could ruin the Internet
– http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-09-climate-change-could-ruin-the-internet
• California aims to have 30% renewable power
– Impact on reliability of power systems
• Last year Nuclear power plants in France were forced to shut down
because cooling water was too warm
• Germany is committed to shutting down all of its nuclear plants
• Droughts will restrict production of hydro-electric power
• Energy shortages and disruptions are predicted to increase in the
coming years

12. Impact on ICT sector
According to IEA ICT will represent 40% of all energy consumption by 2030
www.smart2020.org
ICT represent 8% of global electricity consumption
Future Broadband- Internet alone is expected to consume 5% of all electricity
http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf

13. R&E biggest consumer!!
Per employee Per sector
Australian Computer Society Study
http://www.acs.org.au/attachments/ICFACSV4100412.pdf

14. The ICT energy consumption in
higher- ed
• Campus computing 20-40% electrical energy consumption on most
campuses
– Studies in UK and The Netherlands
– http://goo.gl/k9Kib
• Closet clusters represent up to 15% of electrical consumption
– http://isis.sauder.ubc.ca/research/clean-technology-and-energy/green-it/
• Campus data center alone represents 8-20% of electrical consumption
– http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?pno=1341
• IISD study demonstrated that moving Canadian research to cloud would
pay for itself in energy savings and CO2 reduction
– http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?pno=1341

15. The real cost of campus computing
• Land - 2%
• Core and shell costs – 9% Belady, C., “In the Data Center, Power and Cooling Costs
More than IT Equipment it Supports”, Electronics Cooling
• Architectural – 7% Magazine (February 2007)
• Mechanical/Electrical – 82%
– 16% increase/year since 2004
Source: Christian Belady

16. The Data Deluge
2004: 36 TB
2012: 2,300 TB
Genomic sequencing output x2 every Climate
9 month model intercomparison
project (CMIP) of the IPCC
MACHO et al.: 1 TB
Palomar: 3 TB
2MASS: 10 TB
GALEX: 30 TB
Sloan: 40 TB
Pan-STARRS:
40,000 TB
1330 molec. bio databases
Nucleic Acids Research (96 in Jan 2001) Source: Ian Foster, UoChicago

17. Big science has achieved big successes
OSG: 1.4M CPU-hours/day,
>90 sites, >3000 users,
>260 pubs in 2010
LIGO: 1 PB data in last science
run, distributed worldwide
Robust production solutions
Substantial teams and expense
Sustained, multi-year effort
Application-specific solutions,
built on common technology
ESG: 1.2 PB climate data
delivered to 23,000 users; 600+ pubs
Source: Ian Foster, UoChicago

18. But small science is struggling
More data, more complex data
Ad-hoc solutions
Inadequate software, hardware
Data plan mandates
Source: Ian Foster, UoChicago

19. Growth in sensor networks and Citizen
Science
Glacier Tracking
Real Time Health Monitoring
Smart Trash
19

20. THE CHALLENGE
We need solutions to address climate change, data deluge,
needs of scientists, global collaboration, the evolving
network of any time, any place, any device and yet addresses
the challenge of disappearing IT on campus while still
providing a leadership role in next generation Internet and
broadband, and find ways to pay for it all in an era of severe
fiscal constraint.

21. THE SOLUTION
1. Brokered Green Clouds and off site campus IT
2. Software Defined Networks (OpenFlow)
3. NREN national wireless network
4. Global Interconnected Dynamic Optical Networks
5. eScience Platforms with next gen IdM
6. Community anchor IXPs with CDN and M2M hosting
7. New billion dollar revolving green energy funds at many
universities
21

22. 1. Brokered Green Clouds and off
site CAMPUS IT
22

23. Universities moving to eliminate IT
departments
• Already many primary functions of IT department are being outsourced to
the cloud
– E-mail, web, DNS, research computing, etc
– University of Western Australia has outsourced virtually all campus servers to
an external private cloud
• Even routing, network and firewall functions being outsourced to NREN
– AARnet, SUnet and other NRENs offering border gateway routing services with
collapsed IP backbones
– Software Defined Networks makes it easy to configure outsourced LAN
– Network facilities can be located
• Increasingly most traffic is in/out of campus, instead of within
– Social networking, P2P, Clouds, Kuali, Blackboard
– Future of Campus IT – high speed optical network connected to WiFi/5G hot
spots with tablets
– No servers, no LAN

24. MIT to build zero carbon data center in
Holyoke MA
• The data center will be managed and funded by
the four main partners in the facility: the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco
Systems, the University of Massachusetts and
EMC.
• It will be a high-performance computing
environment that will help expand the research
and development capabilities of the companies
and schools in Holyoke
– http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/ci
sco-emc-team-mit-launch-100m-green-data-center

25. NREN Brokered Cloud for IT
departments and Researchers
• Internet 2 Net +
– Provisioning of multi vendor cloud services leveraging the Internet2
Network and InCommon Federated Authentication
– Interoperable marketplace for services where individual institutions
might procure services from a wide range of cloud services
providers.
• HEFCE and JISC to Deliver Cloud-Based Services for UK Research
– Besides providing brokered cloud services they are also providing cloud
“solutions” for IT departments and researchers
– http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2011-06-27/hefce_and_jisc_to_deliver_cloud-
based_services_for_uk_research.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
• SURFnet: Community Cloud Models and the Role of the R&E network as a
broker for cloud services
– http://www.slideshare.net/haroldteunissen/community-clouds-shared-infrastructure-as-a-service

26. 2. Software Defined networks
26

27. GreenStar Network
World’s First Zero Carbon Cloud/Internet

28. OpenFlow Follow the wind/Follow the sun
Canadian GSN European GSN
Domain Domain
Export VM
Notify EU
Cloud Manager
Cloud Manager Cloud Manager
Internet
Dynamically Configure
IP Tunnel
Host Network Host
Resource Manager Resource
• Shudown VM
• Copy Image • Update VM Context
Mantychore2 • Start VM
Shared
VM storage
Shared
storage VM
Lightpath
Optical switch Optical switch
Host Cloud Proxy
Cloud Proxy Host

29. OpenFlow-based cloud
OpenFlow Network A OpenFlow Network B
VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM
eth1 eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1
eth0 Open Virtual Open Virtual Open Virtual
Open Virtual
Switch (OVS) Switch (OVS) Switch (OVS) Switch (OVS)
Host Host Host Host
OF
Controller
Ethernet Switch OpenFlow Control plane
Internet OpenFlow Data plane
OVS OVS
eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1

30. Green Clouds International
• GreenLight explores how researchers can take advantage of data centers linked by
high-speed networking in an era of carbon-thrifty computing
• Recent studies migrating virtual machines to green energy sites indicate that 100
Gb/s networks are far superior to 10 Gb/s to make this transparent.
• SURFnet 7 lightpath connection to GreenQCloud in Iceland
SURFconecxt control of lightpath to Future Global Network of Green Clouds
GreenQCloud in Iceland interconnected by GLIF

31. Science Cloud Communication Services Network
• Enterprise clouds use commodity internet; computational clouds for data-intensive
science require dynamic cloud provisioning integrated with dynamic high
performance.
• TransCloud: example of dynamic networking & dynamic cloud provisioning
Example of working in the TransCloud
[1] Build trans-continental applications spanning clouds:
• Distributed query application based on Hadoop/Pig
• Store archived Network trace data using HDFS
• Query data using Pig over Hadoop clusters
[2] Perform distributed query on TransCloud, which currently spans the following
sites:
• HP OpenCirrus
• Northwestern OpenCloud
• UC San Diego
• Kaiserslautern
Source: Maxine Brown

32. 3.0 NREN National Wireless
Network
32

33. Building a NREN wireless network
• Vision: to allow students, researchers and employees to collaborate,
research, learn anytime and anywhere they seem fit!
• Also Internet of Things – Machine to Machine communications
• Existing 3G and 4G networks cannot handle data load
– Roaming gateways prevent global seamless access
– Voice centric architectures
• New mobile networks seamlessly integrate with WiFi on campus
– New Wifi 2.0 standards 802.11u allow for data handoff from 3G
networks
– Eduroam can be the global authorization tool
– OpenFlow can be used to architect integrated solutions from wireless
node across optical network

34. Impact of NREN wireless networks
• The phone is a also a sensor platform
• Processing is done in real time in the cloud
– Allowing processing that can’t be done on the device
– Big data analysis
• New campus or hot spot centric architectures integrating LTE and Wifi
– See SURFnet pilot
http://www.surfnet.nl/en/nieuws/Pages/Backgroundarticle.aspx
• WiFi nodes can be powered by renewable sources such as roof top solar
panel over 400Hz power systems or ethernet power
34

35. The Regulatory Challenge
• Today’s SIM-card locks user to the network
• If NREN becomes a MVNO with own SIM-cards, users could
roam seamlessly around the globe
• Only public service providers have access to IMSI-numbers for
SIM-cards
• One option is to lobby regulators to give R&E networks access
to IMSI-numbers

36. 4. Global Interconnected Dynamic
Optical Networks
36

37. GLIF
37

38. e-Research Scenario
GOLE
38
Source: SURFnet

39. Importance of GOLEs
• Increasingly more research and education is international collaboration
– Cornell- Technion announcement
– US overseas university campuses in UK and elsewhere
– GOLES enable direct peering of regional networks or even institutions
• Many researchers need access to commercial clouds and data specialists
– AUP issues often prevent NRENs from directly connecting up these institutions
– Genomics and bio-informatics processing and climate modeling
• Many commercial research institutions need access to lightpaths
– GOLES provide neutral access points for interconnect to AUP free lightpaths
• Enables new services
– Software Defined Network using Switched lambdas
39

40. 5. eScience Platforms with next gen
IdM
40

41. Towards “research IT as a service”
Scientific data management as a service
GO-Store GO-Collaborate GO-Galaxy GO-Transfer
GO-Compute GO-Catalog GO-Team GO-User
Source: Ian Foster, UoChicago
41

42. SaaS services in action: The XSEDE
vision
Academic institution = Standard
interface
XUAS
Globus Online: Hosted persistent services
User Team Catalog Transfer Compute ...
2
InCommon
... Open
Commercial Data Science
XSEDE service provider provider provider Grid
42

43. Virtual Organisations
Collaboration Infrastructure Netherlands BioInformatics Centre (NBIC)
(SURFconext) GuestsNBI
N=6 N=10 N=30 C
Attri N=20 Gro
grou provisioni b. N=66
up
AAI ps ng mgm
…
t
Generic Broker Supporting Services
Network Storage Compute Instrument • SURFfederatie
Virt
Broker Broker Broker Broker
• SURFteamsual
Comput Instrum • OpenSocial
Network Storage
e ent IdP
Services Services
Services Services
Experiment
Publisher
Grid res.
PubMed
My
Apps.NB
IC.nl
Source: SURFnet

44. 6. eScience and Big Data for Citizen
Science and Community
44

45. Extending science and education to
the community
• Community anchor Internet Exchange Points help clear the bottleneck of
content peering
– Co-hosting of CDN caching boxes
– Managed by NREN
– Examples include KAREN (New Zealand), BCnet and UNINETT (Norway)
• Minimize tromboning of R&E traffic to homes and schools
• Can support extension of Eduroam to community WiFi spots and/or
community last mile networks
• Allows for M2M traffic and anywhere, anytime traffic to propagate through
the community
Community IXP managed by NREN
45

46. 7. How to pay for it all
46

47. $1 billion funding program
• Green revolving funds are either part of a university endowment program or publicly traded
entities.
– http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23028
• They make investments in energy efficiency and GHG reduction initiatives. Payback typically
32%
• ICT can represent up to 40% of the electrical energy consumption at university and growing
• The obvious low hanging fruit is to move, as much as possible the closet clusters and campus
data center facilities to commercial clouds. Next is network infrastructure such as routing
and servers
• Other obvious money saving practices are to power laptop and cell phone charging stations
with roof top solar panels or micro windmills, deploy solar/wind powered WiFi nodes, and
use on the move electric charging for campus utility vehicles, etc
• Campus IT folk and NRENs need to educate managers of such funds the IT and networking
can play a much more significant role in reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions
47
then traditional facilities based solutions

48. Cyber-infrastructure in a Carbon Constrained World
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0960.pdf

49. Let’s Keep The Conversation Going
E-mail list
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
Blogspot
Bill St. Arnaud
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/BillStArnaud