Sustainability Impact Assessment Model Example

Decommissioning unused assets in your workload is vital to minimize resource waste and operational costs, while supporting sustainability goals. When aligning your cloud resources to demand, consider the following steps:

• Asset Identification: Conduct regular audits to locate idle or underutilized instances, storage volumes, or services. Use monitoring tools and automation scripts to uncover resources that are no longer required.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis: Evaluate the potential cost and environmental implications of leaving unused assets running. This helps establish tangible benefits associated with immediate decommissioning.
• Resource Rightsizing: Match cloud instance sizes, storage tiers, and network throughput to your actual usage needs. Scale resources up or down based on current and projected demand to avoid overprovisioning.
• Automated Scheduling: Implement time-based shutdowns or idle resource hibernation. Schedule downtime during predictable off-peak hours so infrastructure only runs when needed.
• Ongoing Governance: Maintain a cyclical review process, ensuring continuous optimization of cloud resources to correspond with evolving workload demands.

By proactively retiring unused infrastructure and leveraging appropriate compute, storage, and networking options, you not only reduce costs but also improve your sustainability posture throughout the workload’s lifecycle.