Power-Managed Data Centers for Sustainable Computing

Data centers increasingly consume large amounts of power. In this paper, we develop an efficient and scalable power management scheme, based on optimizing the tradeoff between a processor's speed and its response/delay time to process jobs. Processors/servers are lightly coordinated by a system manager that sets an internal power “price” signal to discourage excessive power usage. The stability of the power management scheme depends on the power pricing function, and a rule of thumb is given for pricing functions that guarantee stability. The analysis is consistent with simulations, which demonstrate the behavior of the scheme. It can be implemented in a decentralized manner across servers/processors, making it scalable to large data centers.