Alexander Kipp

Usage centric green performance indicators

Energy effciency of data centers is gaining importance as energy consumption and carbon footprint awareness are rising. Green Performance Indicators (GPIs) provide measurable means to assess the energy effciency of a resource or system. Most of the metrics commonly used today measure the energy effciency potential of a resource, system or application usage, rather than the energy effciency of the actual usage. In this paper, we argue that the way that the resources and systems are actually used in a given data center configuration is at least as important as the effciency potential of the raw resources or systems. Hence, for data center energy effciency, we suggest to both select energy effcient components (as done today), as well as optimize the actual usage of the components and systems in the data center. To achieve the latter, optimization of usage centric GPI metrics should be employed and targeted as a primary green goal. In this paper we identify and present usage centric metrics, which should be monitored and optimized for improving energy effciency, and hence, reduce the data center carbon footprint.

Applying Green Metrics to optimise the energy-consumption footprint of IT service centres

This paper presents a novel approach to characterise applications with respect to their energy consumption by using a set of energy-related metrics, called Green Metrics. These indicators are based on energy consumption measurements, such as indices of computing resource usage, of environmental impact, of development costs required to (re)design an application in order to optimise its energy consumption footprint, and of organisational factors related to application management. Our approach is framed in the Green Active Management of Energy in IT Service Centres (GAMES) EU project, with a particular focus on green IT. In this paper, we define Green Metrics enabling to characterise an application in terms of the energy it consumes at run time. Such metrics are the basis for measuring the ‘Greenness’ of an application and to detect where it consumes and wastes energy. Hints are provided to improve applications design and execution. Using two application scenarios, we show how monitoring and evaluation of Green Metrics enables to improve energy efficiency.

Energy Aware Dynamic Resource Consolidation Algorithm for Virtualized Service Centers Based on Reinforcement Learning

In this paper we propose an energy aware dynamic consolidation algorithm for virtualized service centers based on reinforcement learning. The energy awareness is enacted by using the Energy Aware Context Model (EACM) to programmatically represent the current service center context situation by means of ontologies. We have defined the EACM model entropy metric for evaluating the service center greenness level. If the entropy value is above a predefined threshold, the service center is not in a green state. As a consequence, consolidation or dynamic power management actions are selected by means of reinforcement learning and executed to bring back the service center in an energy efficient state. The results are promising showing that the proposed energy aware consolidation algorithm decreases the energy consumption with about 26% from the total energy consumption of a service center.

Setting energy efficiency goals in data centers: the GAMES approach

Energy-aware service centers take into account energy consumption of infrastructures, machines, applications, storage systems, and their distributed computing architecture. The approach to energy efficiency in data centers in the GAMES (Green Active Management of Energy in IT Service centers) project is presented: Green Performance Indicators (GPIs), i.e., properties that, continuously monitored, evidence the level of consumed energy by the centers IT resources, can be the basis of a systematic approach to increase energy efficiency. The GPIs are the basis for improving energy efficiency with adaptive actions and to achieve a higher level of green maturity, as prescribed, for instance, in the GreenGrid Data Center Maturity Model (DCMM), based on a usage-centric perspective in GPIs. The paper briefly describes monitoring of GPIs and the adaptation actions adopted to reach the green goals. Preliminary experimental results are discussed.

Service-oriented operating systems: future workspaces

Most people use more than one computing system for their daily work: an office computer, a corporate laptop for travel, and a private desktop computer. These machines not only differ in their power and resources but also in their environment, including deployed applications, available files, and so on. The current trend is leading to an even greater number of devices and a wider range of capabilities. This presents a major challenge to enabling the vision of the mobile user and worker. This article shows how developments in the area of service-oriented computing, embedded devices, and networking enable user-specific virtual working and private environments on the basis of new approaches toward distributed operating systems. These service-oriented operating systems extend the limited capabilities of local devices with (remote) resource pools, aimed at provisioning identical (or similar) environments in any context and location. As we explain, henceforth, future employee workspaces will concentrate much more on mobility, while the actual resources (computational power, storage, data) will be maintained through dedicated corporate server farms, thus greatly reducing the administration effort and enhancing the user experience.

Supporting collaborative engineering using an intelligent web service middleware

Collaborative Engineering tasks are difficult to manage and involve a high amount of risk - as such, these tasks generally involve only well-known pre-established relationships. Such collaborations are generally quite static and do not allow for dynamic reactions to changes in the environment. Furthermore, not all optimal resource providers can be utilised for the respective tasks as they are potentially unknown. The TrustCoM project elaborated the means to create and manage Virtual Organisations in a trusted and secure manner integrating different providers on-demand. However, TrustCoM focused more on the VO than on the participant, whereas the BREIN project is now enhancing the intelligence of such VO systems to support even providers with little business expertise and provide them with capabilities to optimise their performance. This paper analyses the capabilities of current VO frameworks on the example of TrustCoM and identifies the gaps from the participants perspective. It then shows how BREIN addresses these gaps.

Principles of Service Oriented Operating Systems

Grid middleware support and the Web Services domain have advanced significantly over recent years, reaching a point where resource exposition and usage over the web has not only become feasible, but an actual commercial reality. Nonetheless, commercial uptake is still slow, and certainly not progressing the same way as other web developments have been taking place - this is mostly due to the fact that usage is still complicated and restrictive. This paper will discuss a new approach towards tackling grid-like networking across organisational boundaries and across different types of resources by moving main parts of the infrastructure to a lower (OS) level. This will allow more intuitive use of Grid infrastructures for current types of users.

Dynamic Service Encapsulation

Service Provisioning over the internet using web service specifications becomes more and more difficult as real business requirements start to shape the community. One of the most important aspects relates to dynamic service provisioning: whilst the straight forward web service usage would aim at exposing individual resources according to a fixed description, real organizations would want to expose a flexible description of their complexly aggregated products. This paper presents an approach towards reducing the technological overhead in virtual service exposition over the internet, thus allowing for more flexibility. It therefore introduces a dynamic gateway structure that acts as virtual endpoint to message transactions and can encapsulate complex business process on behalf of the provider.

Demonstration of the OPTIMIS toolkit for cloud service provisioning

We demonstrate the OPTIMIS toolkit for scalable and dependable service platforms and architectures that enable flexible and dynamic provisioning of Cloud services. The innovations demonstrated are aimed at optimizing Cloud services and infrastructures based on aspects such as trust, risk, eco-efficiency, cost, performance and legal constraints. Adaptive self-preservation is part of the toolkit to meet predicted and unforeseen changes in resource requirements. By taking into account the whole service life cycle, the multitude of future Cloud architectures, and a by taking a holistic approach to sustainable service provisioning, the toolkit provides a foundation for a reliable, sustainable, and trustful Cloud computing industry.

From Internet to Cross-Organisational Networking

The Internet has become a powerful means of communication and interaction and various research projects have shown its potential to revolutionize business models and means of cooperation. Only recently, development has made significant progress in catching up with research and a series of products have been exposed to the market which may well represent the next step to realize this revolution.