Showing papers on "Green computing published in 2012"

Cloud Load Balancing Techniques : A Step Towards Green Computing

Abstract: Cloud computing is emerging as a new paradigm of large-scale distributed computing. It is a framework for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources. Load balancing is one of the main challenges in cloud computing which is required to distribute the dynamic workload across multiple nodes to ensure that no single node is overwhelmed. It helps in optimal utilization of resources and hence in enhancing the performance of the system. The goal of load balancing is to minimize the resource consumption which will further reduce energy consumption and carbon emission rate that is the dire need of cloud computing. This determines the need of new metrics, energy consumption and carbon emission for energy-efficient load balancing in cloud computing. This paper discusses the existing load balancing techniques in cloud computing and further compares them based on various parameters like performance, scalability, associated overhead etc. that are considered in different techniques. It further discusses these techniques from energy consumption and carbon emission perspective.

Energy efficiency and low carbon enabler green it framework for data centers considering green metrics

Abstract: The increasing demand for storage, networking and computation has driven intensification of large complex data centers that run many of today's Internet, financial, commercial and business applications. A data center comprises of many thousands of servers and can use as much energy as small city. Massive amount of computation power is required to drive and run these server farms resulting in many challenging like huge energy consumptions, emission of green house gases, backups and recovery; This paper proposes energy efficiency and low carbon enabler green IT framework for these large and complex server farms to save consumption of electricity and reduce the emission of green house gases to lower the effects of global warming. The framework uses latest energy saving techniques like virtualization, cloud computing and green metrics to achieve greener data centers. It comprises of five phase to properly implement green IT techniques to achieve green data centers. The proposed framework seamlessly divides data center components into different resource pools and then applies green metrics like Power Usage Effectiveness, Data Center Effectiveness and Carbon Emission Calculator to measure performance of individual components so that benchmarking values can be achieved and set as standard to be followed by data centers.

iSwitch: coordinating and optimizing renewable energy powered server clusters

Abstract: Large-scale computing systems such as data centers are facing increasing pressure to cap their carbon footprint. Integrating emerging clean energy solutions into computer system design therefore gains great significance in the green computing era. While some pioneering work on tracking variable power budget show promising energy efficiency, they are not suitable for data centers due to lack of performance guarantee when renewable generation is low and fluctuant. In addition, our characterization of wind power behavior reveals that data centers designed to track the intermittent renewable power incur up to 4X performance loss due to inefficient and redundant load matching activities. As a result, mitigating operational overhead while still maintaining desired energy utilization becomes the most significant challenge in managing server clusters on intermittent renewable energy generation. In this paper we take a first step in digging into the operational overhead of renewable energy powered data center. We propose iSwitch, a lightweight server power management that follows renewable power variation characteristics, leverages existing system infrastructures, and applies supply/load cooperative scheme to mitigate the performance overhead. Comparing with state-of-the-art renewable energy driven system design, iSwitch could mitigate average network traffic by 75%, peak network traffic by 95%, and reduce 80% job waiting time while still maintaining 96% renewable energy utilization. We expect that our work can help computer architects make informed decisions on sustainable and high-performance system design.

Is software green? Application development environments and energy efficiency in open source applications

Abstract: Context: The energy efficiency of IT systems, also referred to as Green IT, is attracting more and more attention. While several researchers have focused on the energy efficiency of hardware and embedded systems, the role of application software in IT energy consumption still needs investigation. Objective: This paper aims to define a methodology for measuring software energy efficiency and to understand the consequences of abstraction layers and application development environments for the energy efficiency of software applications. Method: We first develop a measure of energy efficiency that is appropriate for software applications. We then examine how the use of application development environments relates to this measure of energy efficiency for a sample of 63 open source software applications. Results: Our findings indicate that a greater use of application development environments - specifically, frameworks and external libraries - is more detrimental in terms of energy efficiency for larger applications than for smaller applications. We also find that different functional application types have distinctly different levels of energy efficiency, with text and image editing and gaming applications being the most energy inefficient due to their intense use of the processor. Conclusion: We conclude that different designs can have a significant impact on the energy efficiency of software applications. We have related the use of software application development environments to software energy efficiency suggesting that there may be a trade-off between development efficiency and energy efficiency. We propose new research to further investigate this topic.

Green-aware workload scheduling in geographically distributed data centers

Abstract: Renewable (or green) energy, such as solar or wind, has at least partially powered data centers to reduce the environmental impact of traditional energy sources (brown energy with high carbon footprint). In this paper, we propose a holistic workload scheduling algorithm to minimize the brown energy consumption across multiple geographically distributed data centers with renewable energy sources. While green energy supply for a single data center is intermittent due to daily/seasonal effects, our workload scheduling algorithm is aware of different amounts of green energy supply and dynamically schedules the workload across data centers. The scheduling decision adapts to workload and data center cooling dynamics. Our experiments with real workload traces demonstrate that our scheduling algorithm greatly reduces brown energy consumption by up to 40% in comparison with other scheduling policies.

Unpacking Green IS: A Review of the Existing Literature and Directions for the Future

Abstract: Green IS is one of the latest manifestations in the realm of sustainable business practices. The decisions surrounding Green IS implementation strategies, policies, and tools provide compelling challenges for organizations. As practitioners have been highly interested in this topic for a while (known as Green IT), there has also been a recent growing interest in Green IS within the IS academic community. In this chapter, we conduct a systematic and comprehensive review of both the practitioner and academic literatures surrounding Green IS. Specifically, our review includes articles published in the IS academic Senior Scholar’s Basket of Journals, hybrid journals such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Software, and MIS Quarterly Executive, and practitioner outlets such as CIO magazine and PC World. Through this review, we identify the main streams of Green IS-related studies that have been undertaken within both practice and academia, and offer a holistic picture of the current state of research/interest in Green IS. We then identify the overlaps and differences between the two sides (that is, academia and practice) in an attempt to unearth noticeable similarities/gaps between both perspectives. Finally, we not only identify the trends in Green IS research, but also provide academic scholars interested in Green IS more focused directions on the specific research questions to address with respect to Green IS.

What IS Can Do for Environmental Sustainability: A Report from CAiSE’11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS

Abstract: The panel on Green and Sustainable Information Systems at the 21st International Conference on Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11), held in London in June 2011, was intended to discuss issues in Environmental Sustainability and Information Systems within the Information Systems Engineering research community. Information systems, which have become pervasive and hence impact on most aspects of human activity, can help to reduce the negative impact of human activities on the environment in two main areas.

Sustainable ICTs and Management Systems for Green Computing

Abstract: Organisational Sustainability Modelling (OSM) is a new way to measure Cloud business performance quantitatively and accurately, and is a key area offered by Cloud Computing Business Framework (CCBF). OSM combines statistical computation and 3D Visualisation to present the Return on Investment (ROI) arising from the adoption of Cloud Computing by organisations, and makes use of a highly structured and organised process to review and evaluate Cloud business performance. The School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), University of Southampton, focusing on cost-savings, is the case study used to illustrate. In addition, i-Solutions and Corporate Planning of the University of Southampton, focusing on user confidence level and service improvement, are another two case studies to support. Data measurements have been taken in the past three years and quantitative analysis has been carefully checked and calculated by OSM to measure ROI. The University of Southampton has achieved cost-saving and user confidence with service improvement offered by Cloud adoption and services, which have been deployed by several universities in the adoption of CCBF. We hope in the near future, more case studies with Green IT, OSM and Cloud migration offered by CCBF can be presented.

Green cloud computing schemes based on networks: a survey

Abstract: The authors are particularly aware that green cloud computing (GCC) is a broad range and a hot field. The distinction between ‘consumer of’ and ‘provider of’ cloud-based energy resources may very important in creating a world-wide ecosystem of GCC. A user simply submits its service request to the cloud service provider with the connection of Internet or wired/wireless networks. The result of the requested service is delivered back to the user in time, whereas the information storage and process, interoperating protocols, service composition, communications and distributed computing, are all smoothly interactive by the networks. In this study, this is a survey on GCC schemes based on networks. The concept and history of Green computing were introduced first, and then focus on the challenge and requirement of cloud computing. Cloud computing needs to become green, which means provisioning cloud service while considering energy consumption under a set of energy consumption criteria and it is called GCC. Furthermore, the recent work done in GCC based on networks, including microprocessors, task scheduling algorithms, virtualisation technology, cooling systems, networks and disk storage were introduced. After that, the works on GCC from their research group was presented in Georgia State University. Finally, the conclusion and some future works were given.

Green IT adoption: a process management approach

Abstract: Purpose – To better understand and assist business managers to deal with green IT adoption, this paper provides a step‐by‐step process management approach.Design/methodology/approach – By drawing on the process management to investigate the green IT adoption, the paper analyzes and discusses four different phases: plan, design, implement, and measure the performance of the process.Findings – The likelihood that companies will successfully adopt green IT initiatives depends on several organizational and environmental factors. The primary factor is the Champion Support. Lack of implementation barriers is another important factor among others.Research limitations/implications – By comparing behavioral and technological changes derived from green IT initiatives and unveiling possible factors associated with the adoption process, this paper provides an opportunity for academics to conduct applied research based on the issues discussed.Practical implications – The paper can be an extremely useful and practical ...

Exploiting VM migration for the automated power and performance management of green cloud computing systems

Abstract: Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm in which "Everything is as a Service", including the provision of virtualized computing infrastructures (known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service modality) hosted on the physical infrastructure, owned by an infrastructure provider. The goal of this infrastructure provider is to maximize its profit by minimizing the amount of violations of Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels agreed with its customers and, at the same time, by lowering infrastructure costs among which energy consumption plays a major role. In this paper, we propose a framework able to automatically manage resources of cloud infrastructures in order to simultaneously achieve suitable QoS levels and to reduce as much as possible the amount of energy used for providing services. We show, through simulation, that our approach is able to dynamically adapt to time-varying workloads (without any prior knowledge) and to significantly reduce QoS violations and energy consumption with respect to traditional static approaches.

Think Globally, Distribute Power Locally: The Promise of Nanogrids

Abstract: Nanogrids use price to mediate local electricity supply and demand, improving electricity allocation at the local level, facilitating integration of local storage and generation, and achieving more efficient use of low-voltage DC from local sources.

High-Performance Energy-Efficient Multicore Embedded Computing

Abstract: With Moore's law supplying billions of transistors on-chip, embedded systems are undergoing a transition from single-core to multicore to exploit this high-transistor density for high performance. Embedded systems differ from traditional high-performance supercomputers in that power is a first-order constraint for embedded systems; whereas, performance is the major benchmark for supercomputers. The increase in on-chip transistor density exacerbates power/thermal issues in embedded systems, which necessitates novel hardware/software power/thermal management techniques to meet the ever-increasing high-performance embedded computing demands in an energy-efficient manner. This paper outlines typical requirements of embedded applications and discusses state-of-the-art hardware/software high-performance energy-efficient embedded computing (HPEEC) techniques that help meeting these requirements. We also discuss modern multicore processors that leverage these HPEEC techniques to deliver high performance per watt. Finally, we present design challenges and future research directions for HPEEC system development.

Runtime monitoring of software energy hotspots

Abstract: GreenIT has emerged as a discipline concerned with the optimization of software solutions with regards to their energy consumption. In this domain, most of the state-of-the-art solutions concentrate on coarse-grained approaches to monitor the energy consumption of a device or a process. However, none of the existing solutions addresses in-process energy monitoring to provide in-depth analysis of a process energy consumption. In this paper, we therefore report on a fine-grained runtime energy monitoring framework we developed to help developers to diagnose energy hotspots with a better accuracy than the state-of-the-art. Concretely, our approach adopts a 2-layer architecture including OS-level and process-level energy monitoring. OS-level energy monitoring estimates the energy consumption of processes according to different hardware devices (CPU, network card). Process-level energy monitoring focuses on Java-based applications and builds on OS-level energy monitoring to provide an estimation of energy consumption at the granularity of classes and methods. We argue that this per-method analysis of energy consumption provides better insights to the application in order to identify potential energy hotspots. In particular, our preliminary validation demonstrates that we can monitor energy hotspots of Jetty web servers and monitor their variations under stress scenarios.

Handbook of Green Information and Communication Systems

Abstract: This book gives a comprehensive guide on the fundamental concepts, applications, algorithms, protocols, new trends and challenges, and research results in the area of Green Information and Communications Systems. It is an invaluable resource giving knowledge on the core and specialized issues in the field, making it highly suitable for both the new and experienced researcher in this area. Key Features: Core research topics of green information and communication systems are covered from a network design perspective, giving both theoretical and practical perspectives Provides a unified covering of otherwise disperse selected topics on green computing, information, communication and networking Includes a set of downloadable PowerPoint slides and glossary of terms for each chapter A 'whose-who' of international contributors Extensive bibliography for enhancing further knowledge Coverage includes: Smart grid technologies and communications Spectrum management Cognitive and autonomous radio systems Computing and communication architectures Data centres Distributed networking Cloud computing Next generation wireless communication systems 4G access networking Optical core networks Cooperation transmission Security and privacy Core research topics of green information and communication systems are covered from a network design perspective, giving both a theoretical and practical perspectiveA 'whose-who' of international contributors Extensive bibliography for enhancing further knowledge

Power management in cloud computing using green algorithm

Abstract: The greatest environmental challenge today is global warming, which is caused by carbon emissions. Energy crisis brings green computing, and green computing needs algorithms and mechanisms to be redesigned for energy efficiency. Green IT refers to the study and practice of using computing resources in an efficient, effective and economic way. The various approaches of the green IT are Virtualization, Power Management, Material Recycling and Telecommuting. The basic principles of cloud computing is to make the computing be assigned in a great number of distributed computers rather than local computer or remote server. In fact, cloud computing is an extend of Grid Computing, Distributed Computing and Parallel Computing. It's foreground is to provide secure, quick, convenient data storage and net computing service centered by internet. Currently, a large number of cloud computing systems waste a tremendous amount of energy and emit a considerable amount of carbon dioxide. Thus, it is necessary to significantly reduce pollution and substantially lower energy usage. The analysis of energy consumption in cloud computing consider both public and private clouds. Cloud computing with green algorithm can enable more energy-efficient use of computing power.

Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems

Abstract: a b s t r a c t In this paper, we propose a general power model along with a versatile optimization methodology that can be applied to different applications for minimizing service delay while satisfying power budget in data centers. We test our methodology on two totally different applications from both cloud computing and enterprise scenarios. Our solution is novel in that it takes into account the dependence of power con- sumption on temperature, attributed to temperature-induced changes in leakage current and fan speed. While this dependence is well-known, we are the first to consider it in the context of minimizing service delay. Accordingly, we implement our optimization strategies with Hadoop, Tomcat, and MySQL on a 40- node cluster. The experimental results show that our solution cannot only limit the power consumption to the power budget but also achieves smaller delay against static solutions and temperature oblivious DVFS solutions.

An agenda for green information retrieval research

Abstract: Nowadays we use information retrieval systems and services as part of our many day-to-day activities ranging from a web and database search to searching for various digital libraries, audio and video collections/services, and so on. However, IR systems and services make extensive use of ICT (information and communication technologies) and increasing use of ICT can significantly increase greenhouse gas (GHG, a term used to denote emission of harmful gases in the atmosphere) emissions. Sustainable development, and more importantly environmental sustainability, has become a major area of concern of various national and international bodies and as a result various initiatives and measures are being proposed for reducing the environmental impact of industries, businesses, governments and institutions. Research also shows that appropriate use of ICT can reduce the overall GHG emissions of a business, product or service. Green IT and cloud computing can play a key role in reducing the environmental impact of ICT. This paper proposes the concept of Green IR systems and services that can play a key role in reducing the overall environmental impact of various ICT-based services in education and research, business, government, etc., that are increasingly being reliant on access and use of digital information. However, to date there has not been any systematic research towards building Green IR systems and services. This paper points out the major challenges in building Green IR systems and services, and two different methods are proposed for estimating the energy consumption, and the corresponding GHG emissions, of an IR system or service. This paper also proposes the four key enablers of a Green IR viz. Standardize, Share, Reuse and Green behavior. Further research required to achieve these for building Green IR systems and services are also mentioned.

An energy consumption model and analysis tool for cloud computing environments

Abstract: Cloud computing delivers computing as a utility to users worldwide. A consequence of this model is that cloud data centres have high deployment and operational costs, as well as significant carbon footprints for the environment. We need to develop Green Cloud Computing (GCC) solutions that reduce these deployment and operational costs and thus save energy and reduce adverse environmental impacts. In order to achieve this objective, a thorough understanding of the energy consumption patterns in complex Cloud environments is needed. We present a new energy consumption model and associated analysis tool for Cloud computing environments. We measure energy consumption in Cloud environments based on different runtime tasks. Empirical analysis of the correlation of energy consumption and Cloud data and computational tasks, as well as system performance, will be investigated based on our energy consumption model and analysis tool. Our research results can be integrated into Cloud systems to monitor energy consumption and support static or dynamic system-level optimisation.

Toward a Zero-Carbon Network: Converging Cloud Computing and Network Virtualization

Abstract: Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the most challenging research topics in ICT because of people's overwhelming use of electronic devices. Current solutions focus mainly on efficient power consumption at the micro level; few consider large-scale energy-management strategies. The low-carbon, nationwide GreenStar Network in Canada uses network and server virtualization techniques to migrate data center services among network nodes according to renewable energy availability. The network deploys a "follow the sun, follow the wind" optimization policy as a virtual infrastructure-management technique.

Synthesis of green IS frameworks for achieving strong environmental sustainability in organisations

Abstract: People are entirely dependent on the environment for existence. In spite of this crucial dependency, human activities are degrading the Earth's environment. The degradation now threatens the wellbeing of all people and possibly the long-term survival of the human race. Environmental degradation has many dire symptoms, such as anthropogenic climate change including global warming, deforestation, water and air pollution, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, and depleted fish stocks, all of which are intensified by an increasing global human population. Environmental sustainability is the solution to environmental degradation, and emphasises maintenance of the environment in order to support human life into the far future. There are several degrees of environmental sustainability, namely very weak, weak, strong, and very strong or absurdly strong. Of these, the overwhelming scientific consensus on environmental degradation necessitates strong environmental sustainability.Organisations are prevailing and prominent social structures that drive the world's economy. Nevertheless, organisations continue to degrade the environmental during the extraction of natural resources, production and processing, and the emission of wastes. However, organisations have considerable resources for achieving environmental sustainability, in the form of technology, global reach, knowledge, power, innovative capacity, motivation, and the capacity for change.Organisational change is impacted by Information systems (IS), which have been influential in enabling and transforming the world's organisations over the past fifty years. IS include information technology (IT) hardware and software, people, processes, and have specific purposes. Green IS includes Green IT, which focuses primarily on environmental sustainability throughout the IT lifecycle, and Green IS aim to enable and transform entire organisations toward environmental sustainability. Green IS present a fundamental solution to organisational environmental degradation, and researchers have developed numerous Green IS frameworks in this regard, each with a particular and significant perspective. This paper responds to the urgency of achieving strong environmental sustainability by synthesising the existing Green IS frameworks into a single Green IS framework that is purposefully aligned to strong environmental sustainability. This paper is theoretical and exploratory in nature, and makes an original contribution by providing a synthesised Green IS framework aligned to the concept of strong environmental sustainability.

Handbook of Energy-Aware and Green Computing

Abstract: Implementing energy-efficient CPUs and peripherals as well as reducing resource consumption have become emerging trends in computing. As computers increase in speed and power, their energy issues become more and more prevalent. The need to develop and promote environmentally friendly computer technologies and systems has also come to the forefront in computing research. A pioneering publication for researchers in computer science and engineering, Handbook of Energy-Aware and Green Computing is one of the first to present a comprehensive account of recent research in energy-aware and green computing. Edited by the co-chairs of the International Green Computing Conference, this handbook incorporates fundamental knowledge from all related areas, including circuit and component design, software, operating systems, networking, mobile computing, and data centers. It also discusses up-to-date research on many aspects of power-aware computing at the component, software, and system levels.

Improving cloud computing energy efficiency

Abstract: The implementation of cloud computing has attracted computing as a utility and enables penetrative applications from scientific, consumer and business domains. However, this implementation faces energy, power and associated cost concerns. In this paper, we present formulations and solutions for Green Cloud Environments (GCE) to minimize its energy consumption under new models by considering static and dynamic portions of cloud components, to reduce severe environmental impacts. To implement this objective, an in-depth knowledge of energy consumption patterns in cloud environment is necessary. We investigate energy consumption patterns. Specifically, we make use of measurable metrics based on runtime tasks to compare rationally the relation existing between energy consumption and cloud workload and computational tasks, as well as system performance. Our research results can be integrated into cloud computing systems to monitor energy consumption and support static and dynamic system level-optimization.

Handbook of Energy-Aware and Green Computing - Two Volume Set

Abstract: Implementing energy-efficient CPUs and peripherals as well as reducing resource consumption have become emerging trends in computing. As computers increase in speed and power, their energy issues become more and more prevalent. The need to develop and promote environmentally friendly computer technologies and systems has also come to the forefront in computing research. A pioneering publication for researchers in computer science and engineering, Handbook of Energy-Aware and Green Computing, Two-Volume Set is one of the first to present a comprehensive account of recent research in energy-aware and green computing. Edited by the co-chairs of the International Green Computing Conference, this handbook incorporates fundamental knowledge from all related areas, including circuit and component design, software, operating systems, networking, mobile computing, and data centers. It also discusses up-to-date research on many aspects of power-aware computing at the component, software, and system levels.

Green ICT toward Low Carbon Society

Abstract: Information and communications technology (ICT) itself produces CO2 emissions due to consumption of electrical power to operate equipment and systems. On the other hand, ICT usage can contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions due to a marked improvement in the efficiency of production, consumption and business, also that of traffic alternatives, and a reduction in traffic volume. This is because that ICT is considered to be the first technology that has increased benefit while decreasing proportional consumption of resources and energy. ICT exploitation can readily contribute to solving the climate change issue. It is thus important to further promote shifting to an ICT-oriented society. This paper describes Green research and development activities for reducing the environmental impact of society by reducing the impact of ICT installations in telecommunication centers, datacenters, and customers’ offices and homes (Green of ICT) and by reducing the impact of society as a whole by providing various kinds of ICT services (Green by ICT).