energy conservation in heterogeneous server clusters
The previous research on cluster-based servers has focused on homogeneous systems. However, real-life clusters are almost invariably heterogeneous in terms of the performance, capacity, and power consumption of their hardware components. In this paper, we argue that designing efficient servers for heterogeneous clusters requires defining an efficiency metric, modeling the different types of nodes with respect to the metric, and searching for request distributions that optimize the metric. To concretely illustrate this process, we design a cooperative Web server for a heterogeneous cluster that uses modeling and optimization to minimize the energy consumed per request. Our experimental results for a cluster comprised of traditional and blade nodes show that our server can consume 42\% less energy than an energy-oblivious server, with only a negligible loss in throughput. The results also show that our server conserves 45\% more energy than an energy-conscious server that was previously proposed for homogeneous clusters.
energy conservation energy heterogeneity server clusters server cluster research systems performance capacities power consumption hardware component paper design efficiency metrication model types distributed optimality process cooperation web server experimentation throughput