Environmental impact of producing and operating server infrastructure : A systematic literature review

Sammanfattning: Technologies that use cloud computing have increased considerably in the last decades. Computer services that we had in local devices have evolved to cloud services, resulting in applications such as online shopping stores, streaming platforms, or databases of large companies. In order to store and manage all the information that these types of services create, data centers were built and have been increasing in number and size in the last years. A big part of these databases is formed by server infrastructures, which are the devices that are responsible for storing and managing the data. Considerable research has been carried out to analyze the quantity of energy that servers consume and reduce it. What has been less considered is the environmental impact that servers have, not when they are operational but in the production phase (material gathering, transportation, assembly, etc.). A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been carried out to answer the research question that has been defined. The environmental impact of different stages is presented confirming the idea that other life cycle phases also have a big importance in the total environmental impact. Methods to reduce that impact are also explained.