Opportunities and challenges to unify workload, power, and cooling management in data centers

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Independent optimization for workload and power management, and active cooling control have been studied extensively to improve data center energy efficiency. Recently, proposals have started to advocate unified workload, power, and cooling management for further energy savings. In this paper, we study this problem with the objectives of both saving energy and capping power. We present the detailed models derived in our previous work from experiments on an blade enclosure system that can be representative of a data center, discuss the optimization opportunities for coordinated power and cooling management, and the challenges for controller design. We then propose a few design principles and examples for unified workload management, power minimization, and power capping. Our simulation-based evaluation shows that the controllers can cap the total power consumption while maintaining the thermal conditions and improve the overall energy efficiency. We argue that the same opportunities, challenges, and designs are also generally applicable to data center level management.