Dynamic Provisioning in Next-Generation Data Centers with On-site Power Production

The critical need for clean and economical sources of energy is transforming data centers that are primarily energy consumers to also energy producers. We focus on minimizing the operating costs of next-generation data centers that can jointly optimize the energy supply from on-site generators and the power grid, and the energy demand from servers as well as power conditioning and cooling systems. We formulate the cost minimization problem and present an offline optimal algorithm. For "on-grid" data centers that use only the grid, we devise a deterministic online algorithm that achieves the best possible competitive ratio of 2 - α_s, where α_s is a normalized look-ahead window size. The competitive ratio of an online algorithm is defined as the maximum ratio (over all possible inputs) between the algorithm's cost (with no or limited look-ahead) and the offline optimal assuming complete future information. We remark that the results hold as long as the overall energy demand (including server, cooling, and power conditioning) is a convex and increasing function in the total number of active servers and also in the total server load. For "hybrid" data centers that have on-site power generation in addition to the grid, we develop an online algorithm that achieves a competitive ratio of at most P_max(2- α_s)/ c_o+c_m/L [1 + 2 P_max- c_o P_max(1+α_g)], where α_s and α_g are normalized look-ahead window sizes, P_max is the maximum grid power price, and L, c_o, and c_m are parameters of an on-site generator. 
Using extensive workload traces from Akamai with the corresponding grid power prices, we simulate our offline and online algorithms in a realistic setting. Our offline (resp., online) algorithm achieves a cost reduction of 25.8% (resp., 20.7%) for a hybrid data center and 12.3% (resp., 7.3%) for an on-grid data center. The cost reductions are quite significant and make a strong case for a joint optimization of energy supply and energy demand in a data center. A hybrid data center provides about 13% additional cost reduction over an on-grid data center representing the additional cost benefits that on-site power generation provides over using the grid alone. © 2013 ACM.