Energy management for server clusters

The central point of this paper is that energy should be viewed as an important element of resource management for Web sites, hosting centers, and other Internet server clusters. In particular, we are developing a system to manage server resources so that cluster power demand scales with request throughput. This can yield significant energy savings because server clusters are sized for peak load, while traces show that traffic varies by factors of 3-6 or more through any day or week, with average load often less than 50% of peak. We propose energy-conscious service provisioning, in which the system continuously monitors load and adaptively provisions server capacity. This promises both economic and environmental benefits.