An Architect’s guide to reducing the carbon footprint of your applications

Treat sustainability as a non-functional requirement. This guide shows architects how to design for a smaller carbon footprint from day one.

#1about 2 minutes

Three characteristics of sustainable modern applications

Modern applications can reduce their carbon footprint by being decomposed into smaller components, using managed services, and leveraging automation.

#2about 15 minutes

Architectural choices for reducing your carbon footprint

Decomposing monoliths, choosing efficient tools like ARM-based processors and graph databases, and selecting appropriate programming languages can significantly improve application efficiency.

#3about 9 minutes

Using managed cloud services for greater efficiency

Moving to the cloud and using managed services allows you to benefit from provider efficiencies, scale to zero with serverless, and make optimal choices for storage and compute.

#4about 4 minutes

Leveraging automation for right-sizing and waste reduction

Automation enables dynamic scaling to match workload demands, right-sizing of resources, and cleanup of unnecessary build artifacts to minimize waste.

#5about 4 minutes

How to measure and track sustainability metrics

Establishing the right proxy metrics for efficiency, such as resource usage per user, is crucial for tracking and reporting on your application's carbon footprint.

#6about 1 minute

Using the AWS shared responsibility and well-architected models

The AWS Shared Sustainability Model clarifies responsibilities, while the Well-Architected Sustainability Pillar provides best practices for building greener applications in the cloud.

#7about 6 minutes

Q&A: Career advice and getting started in open source

Contributing to open source projects you are passionate about, such as Apache Airflow, is a great way to build skills and get noticed in the tech industry.

#8about 6 minutes

Q&A: Gaining buy-in and modernizing legacy applications

Frame sustainability initiatives around CTO priorities like cost reduction and future-proofing, and use patterns like the Strangler Fig to modernize legacy systems incrementally.

#9about 9 minutes

Q&A: Sustainability pitfalls and the developer advocate role

Be aware of trade-offs like increased latency or reduced resilience when optimizing for sustainability, and understand how developer advocates act as a bridge between users and product teams.