Energy-aware video storage and retrieval in server environments

As the popularity of video streaming and sharing over the Internet grows, energy consumption in video server environments increases as well. This paper discusses how energy consumption is a critical concern for video servers and can limit their throughput. We investigate the energy consumption of storage components (disks) in video servers and propose two ways to reduce it for better throughput. First, we organize data on disks in a way that allows easier access by exploiting the inherent properties of video access patterns and giving priority to more important video data. Second, the prioritized ordering of video data allows the server to retrieve only the data required to meet quality of service agreements in an energy efficient way. Therefore, the video quality delivered to clients may be scaled in order to service more concurrent requests and/or reduce energy consumption. Results show that our strategies can increase the number of clients served by as much as 114% when compared to conventional approaches while also meeting constraints on video quality and energy consumption.