SolidFish
Digital sustainability10 min readJune 11, 2020

Get your head out of the clouds!

The cloud is not nowhere. Every saved copy lives on real infrastructure somewhere.

Charlotte J-RSolidFish Journal
cloud computingstoragedata centresdigital footprint
An overview of cloud storage and physical data centres.

Get your head out of the clouds!

The cloud is a useful metaphor, but it can make digital storage feel almost weightless. In reality, photos, documents, messages, backups and application data are stored and processed on physical infrastructure operated across data centres and networks. [[1]](#citenote-1) [[2]](#citenote-2) The exact path differs by service, but the principle is simple: a saved digital copy still lives somewhere.

An overview of cloud storage and physical data centres.
An overview of cloud storage and physical data centres.

The technology age

Data centres are part of the physical foundation of cloud services. [[3]](#cite_note-3) Their scale, design and location vary enormously, so old rankings about the ‘largest’ facility quickly date. What does not date is the underlying reality: online storage depends on buildings, servers, storage media, networking, electricity and cooling.

That matters because digital clutter is easy to ignore. The extra photo attempts, duplicate downloads, old attachments and forgotten folders may feel invisible once they leave the device in your hand, but retained copies still occupy storage somewhere. Not every copy is waste, and backups can be valuable; the question is whether a copy still has a purpose.

Cloud services also move and replicate data in ways that users may not see. [[5]](#citenote-5) [[6]](#citenote-6) Those engineering choices improve resilience and convenience, but they reinforce the point that digital storage is not abstract. When data has become fleeting or redundant, deleting an unnecessary copy can be a sensible housekeeping habit rather than waiting for clutter to become somebody else’s problem.

Growing demand does not translate mechanically into one new data centre per extra file, and modern infrastructure continues to become more efficient. [[7]](#citenote-7) [[8]](#citenote-8) Even so, storage demand, hardware, land, power and cooling remain connected. SolidFish therefore focuses on a modest user-level choice: keep what deserves keeping, and avoid giving fleeting data a forever home by default.

What does this cost the environment

Cooling is one of several substantial engineering demands in data-centre operation, and older studies explored how climate, facility design and location could change that cost. [[9]](#citenote-9) [[10]](#citenote-10) [[11]](#citenote-11) [[12]](#citenote-12) The numbers vary by technology and era, so the more useful question is broader: what trade-offs come with placing ever more digital infrastructure into the physical world, and which stored copies are actually worth sustaining?

Illustration of the environmental cost of data-centre operations.
Illustration of the environmental cost of data-centre operations.

Is there another way

There is no single switch that makes digital infrastructure sustainable. Cleaner energy, efficient hardware, better cooling, longer-lived equipment and thoughtful service design all matter. Users also have a smaller but direct choice: stop treating every digital copy as something that deserves indefinite storage.

That is where SolidFish fits. Fleeting information can have a clear lifetime from the start, instead of relying on someone remembering to clean it up months or years later. It is not a claim that one expired share changes the data-centre industry; it is a practical habit that keeps purpose and persistence connected. Every little helps.

Sources and further reading

  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-1) Caesar Wu, Rajkumar Buyya (2015) A Complete Guide to Planning, Designing and Building a Cloud Data Center 153-191.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-2) Where Is Cloud Data Actually Stored – Technology Overview On thinking about cloud computing.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-3) Fares Alharbia, Yu-Chu Tian, Maolin Tang, Wei-Zhe Zhang, Chen Peng, Minrui Fei (2019) An Ant Colony System for energy-efficient dynamic Virtual Machine Placement in data centres 228-238.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-4) Top 10 biggest data centres from around the world: A look at data centres spread across the globe.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-5) Where Is Cloud Data Actually Stored – Technology Overview On thinking about cloud computing.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-6) Where on earth is cloud data actually located? Another look at cloud computing.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-7) The Data Center Is (Almost) Dead: The shift away from the traditional data center continues.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-8) A Data Centers standards overview pdf: Data Centers standards overview.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-9) Greenberg A, Hamilton J, Maltz DA, Patel P. The cost of cloud research problems in data centre networks, published by Microsoft Research Redmond WA, USA, published by ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, January 2009; 39(1): 6873.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-10) Koomey J PhD. White paper, A Simple Model for Determining True Total Cost of Ownership for Data Centers, Version 2.1, March 31, 2008.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-11) Uptime Institute, p. 7.; Greenberg A, Hamilton J, Maltz DA, Patel P. The cost of cloud research problems in data centre networks, published by Microsoft Research Redmond WA, USA, published by ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, January 2009; 39(1): 6873.
  • [[UP]](#cite_ref-12) Largest Data Center in US & Largest Data Center in the World: And the title of the largest Data Center in the world goes to...