Energy-Efficient Datacenters

Pervasive use of cloud computing and the resulting rise in the number of datacenters and hosting centers (that provide platform or software services to clients who do not have the means to set up and operate their own computing facilities) have brought forth many concerns, including the electrical energy cost, peak power dissipation, cooling, and carbon emission. With power consumption becoming an increasingly important issue for the operation and maintenance of the hosting centers, corporate and business owners are becoming increasingly concerned. Furthermore, provisioning resources in a cost-optimal manner so as to meet different performance criteria, such as throughput or response time, has become a critical challenge. The goal of this paper is to provide an introduction to resource provisioning and power or thermal management problems in datacenters, and to review strategies that maximize the datacenter energy efficiency subject to peak or total power consumption and thermal constraints, while meeting stipulated service level agreements in terms of task throughput and/or response time.