Popcorns-Pro: A Cooperative Network-Server Approach for Data Center Energy Optimization

Abstract: Data centers have become a popular computing platform for various applications, and they account for nearly 2% of total US energy consumption. Therefore, it has become important to optimize data center power, and reduce their energy footprint. Most existing work optimizes power in servers and networks independently and does not address them together in a holistic fashion that has the potential to achieve greater power savings. In this article, we present PopcornsPro, a cooperative server network framework for energy optimization. We present a comprehensive power model for heterogeneous data center switches along with low power mode designs in combination with the server power model. We design job scheduling algorithms that place tasks onto servers in a power-aware manner, such that servers and network switches can take effective advantage of low power state and available network link capacities. Our experimental results show that we are able to achieve significantly higher savings up to 80% compared to the previously well-known server and network power optimization policies.