Assessment of a power capping strategy in a multilayer network with a variable number of green nodes

The paper deals with the problem of resource provisioning in a multilayer network connecting data centers, where a variable number of network nodes is powered by energy produced from renewable resources. We show that an enormous reduction of energy consumed in non-green nodes may be obtained by using the power capping strategy. We consider a rarely investigated set of scenarios covering a wide range of the number of green nodes in the network, starting from the network with one green node up to the case where almost all nodes are powered from renewable energy resources. We show that the effectiveness of the power capping implemented in the network highly depends on the number and location of green nodes as well as on the offered load, and is the greatest in networks with a moderate number of green nodes. Moreover, we show that a small number of nodes powered by renewable energy sources inevitably leads to high blocking probability of those nodes. A possible solution to this problem is also proposed.