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Cutting the electric bill for internet-scale systems

Published: 16 August 2009 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Energy expenses are becoming an increasingly important fraction of data center operating costs. At the same time, the energy expense per unit of computation can vary significantly between two different locations. In this paper, we characterize the variation due to fluctuating electricity prices and argue that existing distributed systems should be able to exploit this variation for significant economic gains. Electricity prices exhibit both temporal and geographic variation, due to regional demand differences, transmission inefficiencies, and generation diversity. Starting with historical electricity prices, for twenty nine locations in the US, and network traffic data collected on Akamai's CDN, we use simulation to quantify the possible economic gains for a realistic workload. Our results imply that existing systems may be able to save millions of dollars a year in electricity costs, by being cognizant of locational computation cost differences.

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Spatial and thermal aware methods for efficient workload management in distributed data centersFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2023.12.006153(360-374)Online publication date: Apr-2024
    • (2023)A Framework for Several Electricity Retailers Cooperatively Implement Demand Response to Distributed Data CenterIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid10.1109/TSG.2022.318983514:1(277-289)Online publication date: Jan-2023
    • (2023)Energy-Efficient Joint Task Assignment and Migration in Data Centers: A Deep Reinforcement Learning ApproachIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2022.321020420:2(961-973)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
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    Published In

    cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
    ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review  Volume 39, Issue 4
    SIGCOMM '09
    October 2009
    325 pages
    ISSN:0146-4833
    DOI:10.1145/1594977
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    • cover image ACM Conferences
      SIGCOMM '09: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2009 conference on Data communication
      August 2009
      340 pages
      ISBN:9781605585949
      DOI:10.1145/1592568
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 16 August 2009
    Published in SIGCOMM-CCR Volume 39, Issue 4

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    Author Tags

    1. cloud computing
    2. electricity markets
    3. traffic engineering

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Spatial and thermal aware methods for efficient workload management in distributed data centersFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2023.12.006153(360-374)Online publication date: Apr-2024
    • (2023)A Framework for Several Electricity Retailers Cooperatively Implement Demand Response to Distributed Data CenterIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid10.1109/TSG.2022.318983514:1(277-289)Online publication date: Jan-2023
    • (2023)Energy-Efficient Joint Task Assignment and Migration in Data Centers: A Deep Reinforcement Learning ApproachIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2022.321020420:2(961-973)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
    • (2023)Dual Optimization of Revenue and Expense in Geo-Distributed Data Centers Using Smart GridIEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing10.1109/TCC.2022.315098511:2(1622-1635)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
    • (2023)Coordinative Optimization Between Multiple Data Center Operators and a System Operator Based on Two-Level Distributed Scheduling AlgorithmIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2022.318835310:9(7517-7527)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
    • (2023)DER Pricing Power in the Presence of Multi-Location Consumers with Load Migration Capabilities2023 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT EUROPE)10.1109/ISGTEUROPE56780.2023.10408445(1-5)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Waste heat reutilization and integrated demand response for decentralized optimization of data centersEnergy10.1016/j.energy.2022.126101264(126101)Online publication date: Feb-2023
    • (2022)Power Modeling for Effective Datacenter Planning and Compute ManagementIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid10.1109/TSG.2021.312527513:2(1611-1621)Online publication date: Mar-2022
    • (2022)Energy-Aware Cloud Workflow Applications Scheduling With Geo-Distributed DataIEEE Transactions on Services Computing10.1109/TSC.2020.296510615:2(891-903)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2022
    • (2022)Proliferation of Small Data Networks for Aggregated Demand Response in Electricity MarketsIEEE Transactions on Power Systems10.1109/TPWRS.2021.311546737:3(2297-2311)Online publication date: May-2022
    • Show More Cited By

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