Keynote: Building IT Green: A Journey of Platforms, Data, and Developer Empowerment at Deutsche Bahn

Summary

The speaker shares a personal story of struggling with illness while highlighting the urgent issue of climate change. They emphasize the importance of individual and collective action, drawing parallels with the power of a surfing wave. The narrative then shifts to the role of technology and digitalization in addressing climate challenges, particularly focusing on sustainable mobility and the green digitalization initiative. The speaker advocates for the empowerment of developers to make significant changes through efficient use of resources and the implementation of energy-saving strategies in cloud operations, exemplified by the use of Kubernetes and other tools. The message concludes with a call to action for immediate and informed engagement in environmental conservation efforts.

Takeaways

• 🌊 The speaker uses the metaphor of creating a 'big wave' to illustrate the collective power and energy needed to address climate change.
• 😷 The speaker shares a personal struggle with flu, using it as a narrative to emphasize the importance of overcoming challenges, like tackling climate change.
• 🏖️ A connection to nature through surfing is highlighted as a pivotal moment for the speaker's environmental awareness, emphasizing the need for sustainable practices.
• 🌱 The urgency of climate change is discussed, noting that environmental issues have been recognized since the '90s, but insufficient political action has been taken.
• 🚄 Sustainable mobility, particularly through train travel, is presented as a crucial solution for achieving climate targets, over relying on infrastructure expansion.
• 💡 The impact of digitalization on energy consumption is acknowledged, with a prediction that it will require the electrical consumption equivalent of Sweden or Germany.
• 🌿 The concept of 'green digitalization' is introduced, aiming to address the energy demands of digital technologies through initiatives supported by CEOs and grassroots movements.
• 🔧 Developers are identified as key agents of change, with the power to influence software and infrastructure efficiency through their everyday decisions.
• 🤖 Kubernetes is praised as a tool for efficient cloud operations and carbon reduction, with its potential to increase resource utilization and reduce waste.
• 📈 The importance of data visibility and real-time information is emphasized for understanding the energy impact of code changes and workloads.
• 🚀 The call to action is for immediate, small-scale beginnings to harness the intrinsic motivation of developers and communities to care for the planet and reduce carbon footprints.

Q & A

What is the main issue the speaker is struggling with at the beginning of the transcript?

The speaker is struggling with the flu and its effects, which include fever and hallucination dreams, making them question their ability to stand on stage and give a 15-minute talk.

What does the speaker compare to the experience of surfing?

The speaker compares the adrenaline and energy rush of catching a wave while surfing to the energy and focus they want from the audience during their talk.

What is the urgency the speaker refers to in relation to climate change?

The urgency the speaker refers to is the need for immediate action on climate change, as environmental issues were already being discussed in the '90s, and despite some political efforts like the Kyoto Protocol, they were insufficient to address the issue.

What is the speaker's connection to the company they mention?

The speaker is connected to the company through their role in promoting sustainable mobility, specifically through train travel, which they believe is an important aspect of achieving climate targets.

How does the speaker describe the impact of digitalization on energy consumption?

The speaker describes the impact of digitalization as having an exponential growth in energy consumption, with estimates suggesting a need for the electricity consumption equivalent to that of Sweden or Germany within the next three years.

What is the green digitalization initiative mentioned by the speaker?

The green digitalization initiative is a movement started in 2022 aimed at addressing the energy demands and environmental impact of digitalization. It is supported by CEOs and CIOs and has resulted in grassroots efforts from developers within the company.

What is the speaker's view on the concept of carbon compensation?

The speaker believes that while carbon compensation is an important measure, it cannot be the sole solution due to the exponential growth of energy demands. They argue that there are physical limits to growth and that strategies for sufficiency and efficiency are needed.

How does the speaker describe the role of developers in addressing climate change?

The speaker views developers as everyday decision-makers when it comes to software and believes that engaging them and providing the right tools is crucial for making changes in how code is developed and infrastructure is managed.

What is the significance of Kubernetes for the speaker and their company?

Kubernetes is seen as a tool for efficient cloud operations and carbon reduction. The speaker believes it is not just a container orchestration tool but also a platform-building tool that can help achieve high density of containers and improve resource utilization.

What solution does the speaker propose for better resource utilization in cloud environments?

The speaker proposes the use of vertical pod autoscaling to optimize container workloads according to their needs, which can help reduce wasted resources and improve overall efficiency.

How does the speaker suggest measuring the energy impact of workloads?

The speaker suggests using tools like Kepler to gather energy metrics and provide real-time data on the energy usage of individual components. This data can then be visualized in dashboards, allowing for better understanding and management of energy consumption.

What is the speaker's final advice to the audience?

The speaker advises the audience to start taking action now, as the issue of climate change is urgent. They encourage starting small and focusing on empowering developers and leveraging platforms to make a positive impact on the environment.

Outlines

00:00

🌊 Surfing and the Power of Unity

The speaker begins by sharing a personal story of struggling with the flu and feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of speaking to a large audience. However, they find inspiration in their love for surfing, using the metaphor of creating a 'big wave' to illustrate the collective power of the audience. The speaker emphasizes the importance of individual and collective action, particularly in the face of urgent environmental issues like climate change. They recount the early days of environmental awareness in the '90s and the insufficient political actions taken, such as the Kyoto Protocol, highlighting the need for more robust and engaged efforts to address climate change.

05:00

🌱 Green Digitalization and Developer Empowerment

The speaker transitions into discussing the role of digitalization in sustainability, particularly in the context of cloud computing and its increasing energy demands. They express concern over the limitations of current tools for measuring carbon emissions accurately, especially at the application level. The speaker then introduces the concept of 'green digitalization,' initiated by Deustche Telekom in 2022, which aims to tackle the environmental impact of digital technologies. They stress the importance of empowering developers to make informed decisions about resource usage and efficiency, advocating for platforms like Kubernetes as a means to achieve greener cloud operations.

10:02

🚂 Optimizing Cloud Operations for Sustainability

The speaker delves deeper into the practical aspects of optimizing cloud operations for sustainability. They discuss the challenges of managing resource allocation in containerized environments, highlighting the issue of underutilized CPU resources. The speaker advocates for the use of Kubernetes features like vertical pod autoscaling to optimize resource usage and reduce waste. They also mention the benefits of scheduling workloads to align with human work patterns, such as using down scalers to shut down unnecessary processes during off-hours. The speaker emphasizes the need for better data on energy consumption to inform decision-making and introduces tools like Kepler for energy metric analysis, which can provide insights down to the container level.

15:03

🌐 Community Building and the Future of Green Technology

In the final paragraph, the speaker reflects on the broader implications of the community's role in driving sustainable practices within technology. They stress the urgency of starting now and the importance of data in guiding efforts to reduce energy consumption. The speaker shares their experience with rolling out Kepler, highlighting the challenges of enterprise readiness and the need to balance detailed metrics with practical monitoring. They conclude by encouraging the audience to start small and to leverage the intrinsic motivation of developers to foster a culture of sustainability. The speaker's call to action is to focus on empowerment, community engagement, and the continuous improvement of green technologies.

Keywords

💡Flu

In the context of the video, 'flu' refers to a contagious viral illness that affects the respiratory system. The speaker mentions having caught the flu over the weekend, which highlights their personal struggle and determination to still deliver the talk despite feeling unwell. This term is used to establish a relatable human element at the beginning of the transcript, setting the stage for the audience to empathize with the speaker's situation.

💡Surfing

Surfing is a water sport that involves riding on the forward or face of a moving wave, which the speaker uses as a metaphor for the energy and action needed to address climate change. The speaker's first contact with nature and the adrenaline-filled moments experienced while surfing are contrasted with the current urgent need for collective action on climate issues. This keyword ties the personal experience of the speaker to the broader environmental message of the talk.

💡Climate Change

Climate change is the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place. In the video, it represents the central theme and urgency that the speaker is trying to convey. The speaker discusses the history of climate change awareness and the need for immediate, collective action to mitigate its effects. This keyword encapsulates the global environmental challenge that the speaker is addressing and calls for action from every individual and organization.

💡Sustainability

Sustainability refers to the practice of meeting current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In the context of the video, the speaker emphasizes sustainable mobility, particularly through train travel, as a means to reduce carbon emissions and achieve climate targets. This keyword is integral to the speaker's argument for a shift in our approach to transportation and infrastructure development.

💡Digitalization

Digitalization is the process of changing from analog or manual systems to digital or computerized systems. The speaker discusses the impact of digitalization on energy consumption and the need for 'green digitalization' initiatives to address the exponential growth in energy demands. This keyword is crucial in understanding the dual role of technology in both contributing to and mitigating environmental issues.

💡Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source platform used for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. In the video, the speaker praises Kubernetes as a tool for efficient cloud operations and carbon reduction, highlighting its role in achieving high container utilization rates and resource optimization. This keyword exemplifies the practical solutions that can be implemented in the tech industry to support sustainability goals.

💡Vertical Pod Autoscaler

Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) is a Kubernetes feature that automatically adjusts the resources allocated to a pod based on its CPU and memory usage. The speaker mentions VPA as a tool that empowers developers to optimize their applications' resource usage, leading to more efficient operations and reduced energy consumption. This keyword is an example of the specific technical tools that can be leveraged to address the broader issue of sustainability in software development and operations.

💡Green Digitalization

Green digitalization refers to the process of implementing digital technologies in an environmentally sustainable way, aiming to reduce the carbon footprint of digital processes. The speaker introduces the concept of 'green digitalization' as a strategic initiative to address the energy consumption associated with digitalization, emphasizing the need for a sustainable approach to technology development and use.

💡Carbon Compensation

Carbon compensation is a strategy to offset carbon dioxide emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove an equivalent amount of CO2 elsewhere. The speaker critiques the reliance on carbon compensation, arguing that it should not be seen as a solution to the exponential growth in energy demands, but rather as one part of a broader strategy to address climate change. This keyword is important in understanding the complexities of climate action and the need for a multifaceted approach.

💡Developer Empowerment

Developer empowerment refers to the process of providing developers with the tools, knowledge, and autonomy to make decisions that positively impact the environment and efficiency of software development. The speaker emphasizes the role of developers in driving change towards sustainability through their everyday decisions and actions. This keyword highlights the importance of engaging and enabling the tech community to lead by example in sustainable practices.

💡Energy Metrics

Energy metrics are quantitative measures used to assess and track energy consumption and efficiency. In the video, the speaker discusses the importance of having access to energy metrics to understand the impact of workloads and to optimize resource usage. This keyword is central to the argument that transparency and data-driven insights are crucial for making informed decisions that support sustainability goals.

Highlights

The speaker shares a personal struggle with flu and uses it as a metaphor for needing help to create a 'wave' of action.

Growing up in an ugly suburb sparked the speaker's appreciation for nature through surfing, highlighting the importance of personal experiences in environmental awareness.

The urgency of climate change is emphasized, noting that environmental issues were recognized in the '90s but political action was insufficient.

The speaker's involvement with a company focused on sustainable mobility through train travel, underscoring the role of individual choices in climate action.

The exponential growth in electricity consumption due to digitalization is discussed, with a prediction of needing the equivalent of Germany's consumption by 2025.

The limitations of current cloud provider tools in measuring application-specific carbon emissions are highlighted, indicating a need for better metrics.

The concept of 'green digitalization' is introduced, showing the industry's response to the environmental impact of technology.

Kubernetes is praised as a tool for efficient cloud operations and carbon reduction, demonstrating the potential of technology to address environmental issues.

The importance of developer empowerment in achieving climate targets is stressed, as they are the decision-makers in software development.

The use of vertical pod autoscaling is suggested to optimize resource usage, reducing waste and improving efficiency.

The concept of scheduling workloads to align with human work patterns is proposed to save energy, such as using down scalers to turn off environments during off-hours.

Information visibility is deemed crucial for making informed decisions on energy usage, with the introduction of a tool like KLA for energy metrics.

The impact of developer actions on carbon emissions is discussed, with the idea of correlating code changes with energy consumption.

The importance of starting now and taking small steps towards energy efficiency and green technology is emphasized.

The call to focus on empowering developers and leveraging their intrinsic motivation to care for the planet is highlighted.

Transcripts

hello Paris hello

everyone I hope you are having a great

time are you having a great

time that's good to know because I'm

having a terrible

time I caught this flu this weekend I

thought how I will I stand to this Stage

15 minutes talking

to 180 M

all and tonight I could not sleep with

fever and I had this kind of

hallucination dreams and so on you know

and I got an idea there

and I I I will need your help so I ask

you that you if you have things on your

lap and so on put them on a safe place

under your

chair and

um first I want to talk why I I I need

this I I grew up in a kind of ugly

suburb of an very beautiful capital city

at the Atlantic and my first Contact to

Nature and uh my interaction with nature

was when going to to the coast to Surf

and you have this moments when you are

surfing and you can be completely wasted

either because you partti the last days

or because you were surfing the whole

day but when there's this wave coming

you get this adrenaline and this energy

because you want to catch this wave and

you definitely don't want to be caught

by the wave so what I'm going to ask you

is that we make a big wave and show the

power of the cuon in Paris and for this

I we I will give you a signal on three

and the of course the first sles go and

you know how wave Works no so let's go

one two

three

ah this was not the wave I would like to

catch come on I want I I want energy I

need your energy and your impulse and I

also want to hear the the the Overflow

rooms and the people at home so everyone

needs to make so again one 2 3

go up to the back yeah thank you thank

you very much so this is the start of

the

[Music]

story the story I'm going to tell you is

precisely about the urgency of climate

change already in the '90s when I was

surfing we had already all this

environment issues coming up and um but

the politics were still not so so far

with it we had the first meetings in in

uh the Rio Janeiro in '92 we had the

first Kyoto Protocol with the first

commitments to climate targets but they

were all kind of insufficient although

science already knew that it's a urgent

matter and requires a multi-level action

and engaging every individual and

organization to achieve the targets that

we need

and um it was not difficult when a

friend of mine um contact me uh one day

and and said hey we have this team at

the Deutsche bar and we do kubernetes

and so on and yeah I love I love this

and but I also said yeah this is

actually a um company with a purpose

because it's I Love Trains I love train

travel and um I like to

um I think sustainable Mobility is um

with trains is a very important to

achieve the climate targets and our

company also believes this so we are

pushing forward to more Train Transport

for Freight and passengers and for

achieving this we obvious cannot just

build infinitely more infrastructure

this is quite heavy infrastructure we

also need to optimize the infrastructure

make it more efficient more modern and

this requires a highly degree of

digitalization but digitalization comes

with an with an

impact and the impact is according to

the International Energy agency quite uh

remarkable we see that in the next three

years according to the last report we

will at least require the amount of

electricity consumption of Sweden and in

the worst case scenario the electricity

consumption of Germany so we are

reaching an exponential consumption

phase and of

course there our um approaches to reduce

it but we also want to approach that the

deutan started a green digitalization

initiative in

20222 to address this

question and it came with the support of

CEOs and cios but it immediately raised

also a very strong Grassroots movement

from developers from employers of the

company that started raising a lot of

initiatives to um small initiatives on

their free times uh making small

contributions uh to measure for example

um the the emissions of websites or uh

to make some papers on how to uh reduce

the impact on your home office work all

kinds of initiatives raising there

and we also had a project where we

wanted to measure and to bring

developers to be able to measure the

impact of our workloads and we started

because we are a cloud uh based uh we

have a cloud cloud-based approach uh we

started to look at what the cloud

providers

uh give us in terms of tools and

unfortunately we did not find uh very um

helpful information because the tools um

have

limitations they are not able to assign

to an application so if I have on my

accounts multiple

applications uh there's no tax support

uh I cannot distinguish it uh the

granularity is very low so I have 50%

ec2 and um 20% everything else it's not

telling me much

it's not very actual sometimes you get

the information three months after uh

the data has been uh created and it does

not give you any information on the

energy use why is this important because

emissions there are calculated also with

compensation and this means that you are

not able to establish a casual casual

relationship between the actions that

you do on your all day and um the the

effect on

emissions and to understand also the

problem of compensation uh I would like

to ask who is your fan of Doctor Who

series yeah quite some yeah great

science fiction series I watch it with

my daughters every uh evening almost and

I we hope still to finish it before they

leave home but um yeah there's this

episode where they say suddenly wake up

in middle of London and London is full

of a forest so this is for me a good

metaphor of compensation of course

compensating carbon is an important

measure but we cannot think that with an

exponential growth scenario of

exponential growth of energy demands

that we will be able to compensate all

this energy because there are

effectively limits to growth physical

limits and and so we need to address the

different strategies for um sufficiency

what I really need and why for

efficiency how do I minimize the

resource used at produ and production

and consistent

which would be the case for example of

of compensation so focusing first of all

on the efficient part and on the role of

developers back to the agents on this

talk I had the to topic developer

empowerment so developers are

effectively effectively the everyday

decision makers in what comes to

software we don't need management papers

to um to say we we are doing this and

achieving this targets if we don't

engage Developers and give them the

tools in the hand we will not be able to

make a change in the way we develop code

in the way we um manage infrastructure

so we POS the question what tools and

and approaches are able to empower these

developers let's start with

platforms we have a platform strategy at

the Doan and in the last years we comb

converge uh the whole subsidiaries to um

enforce standardization in this in this

um level and the importance of platforms

is uh on this aspect is that we can

leverage effects and provide an high

level of standardization and open to

contributions that improve it

continuously and provide safe same

design um aspects that everyone can use

without even thinking am I doing it

green or not it's just um helping you to

be green by

default I myself I'm a bit biased I love

kubernetes I was product owner of two

teams uh in this field and uh have a

personal affility to this but I believe

kubernetes is a tool for efficient Cloud

operations and for carbon F reduction

per Excellence it's not only a container

orchestration tool it's much more

powerful than that it's a platform

building tool and it's a green it

tool we have uh with our clusters

achieved one of the um interesting uh

very high density of containers we have

some shared clusters and we had uh then

put of course the node AO scaling and we

managed to achieve around 70% of CPU

utilization on these shared clusters

it's quite a high utilization so you

would say well we are effective we don't

need to do anything

else the fact is however only 15% of

this utilization was effectively used by

the applications we could see for this

for example on graph dashboards where

there are a lot of reserved um CPU

utilization but only a very small part

of it is being used why is this happen

well once it runs no one cares we are we

have a lot of things to do in our

business all day so I Define requests

and

limits um traditionally um the API uh um

request limits 512 megabytes it is

running I make it conservative because I

think maybe there will be a lot of

people coming and then I cannot burst so

rather have it conservative and it stays

there and it's taking CPU it's occupying

the node and wasting

resources fortunately kubernetes offers

us a vertical P AO scalar there also of

course horizontal Part auto scal and so

on but I find this one particularly

interesting because it is taking out of

the ends of the developer they need to

think what would be the appropriate

resources and rather making

recommendations or even automatically

adjusting the container workloads to be

optimized to their

needs so let's go out with expensive

getwork and make sure to use vertical

pod outo scalar the second aspect

related to the sufficient see is

scheduling and kubernetes is also good

on this you know we have all these

worker rights movements that manage that

we are able to work eight hours a day

and have eight hours to do whatever we

want and eight hours to sleep

I don't think most of you do this anyway

but but let's assume everyone works from

9 to 5 like like like would be the

traditional approach this means two3 of

the day there's no one at the office

and your workloads are running there

development environments test

environments we testing it with test

testing stuff at midnight just turn it

off use Cube down scaler annotate your

deployments so so simple like that it

will turn off when you leave the office

it will turn on again when you when you

come back and it's working you don't

even need to care for it it does it

every day it saves a lot of energy and

it costs

nothing last

aspect we need information

visibility it's like if I am traveling

by train and my train is late or it

fails what do I do if I did not have

good data informing me providing me how

how will be my

Alternatives so this is where we came

with KLA we wanted to grab the energy

metrics and I will not go into detail in

Kepler here because there are 50 at

least 50 people in this room for sure

that know in detail how Kepler um

evaluates um energy statistics and

transforms this into uh into wats uh

but the interesting there is that you

can

actually get information from high level

up to the container level so really have

information on real on near real time on

how much energy your single components

are using and you know in grafana it's

also possible you can make for example

an annotation from your pipeline and

Associate a certain change in your code

with an impact on the

consumption with we tried to roll it out

we thought that's actually yeah great

open source it's available let's just

roll it out it was not so easy the first

one was the Enterprise Readiness in

terms of security there were some

unneeded dependencies um there that we

needed to

remove it were able to give give a

contribution which was

great and the second one was well there

were a lot of metrics so there was

someone being called in the night on the

on call duty and you know how people

hate this no one like to be called in

the night for because the monitoring

system is overloaded so we had to reduce

the um scraping interval which was by

default on 3 seconds to much less and

actually we don't want to keep also so

much data so it's it's enough if we have

10 20 seconds scraping to give this

information about uh what is the effect

of the different

commits so data is the source of

everything and we have seen on the left

side where you see the green is the

kubernetes pushing back to grafana and

it allowed us to make this beautiful

dashboards dashboards are always

something beautiful I I find them at at

least and I think many people love

dashboards and um with this we had the

first tool that really brings this in

the hand of developers to to make a

change and then we of course started

getting more and more people interested

on this and to gather the whole

Cloud carbon footprint um data and we

required a middle layer with our data L

with the data with a data set with data

governance that is in the middle and

allows for other systems to couple and

also create information for other

potential agents like for example

architecture management and Enterprise

architecture management we see here um

an example of the dashboard that we are

building with our Enterprise arit

management system system and um so um

it's about really bringing the tools

also to and and the information to the

tools that are already being used by

these people so as a final remarks I

would like to say the first important

thing is start start now it is urgent

the issue is urgent and we are all in an

early stage of knowing how to actually

measure energy we have lack of

information we don't know if this data

is good but it's better as no data some

information is better as no information

so just start you will see how many

people because really developers have an

intrinsic motivation not really to save

costs but everyone has an intrinsic

motivation to care for our planet I

believe it so just start small and

beautiful and you will see how your

community and your e system around the

platforms and around green it will um

grow and focus on empowerment focus on

engine on the agents on the people that

are on the all day taking decisions with

their actions encourage developer

initiative and their intrisic

motivation so thank you very much um

let's stick together if you want contact

me or any of my colleagues that are also

on this uh conference and um it was a

pleasure to be here and I would like to

to ask the moderator to come here and

because I want you also to experience

this wave yeah so let's do it one more

time if you don't mind H so one two

3 thank you very much have a nice day

thank you so much

[Music]

Quon