Down, Douglas (McMaster University)

Purpose

Data Centres (DCs) are the core infrastructure that supports the explosive growth of digital information. However, data centres are energy hungry and produce a huge amount of carbon emissions. It is expected that by 2020, data centres' carbon emissions will account for 12% of the global emissions. Most of the energy at the data centre is consumed by the cooling and power distribution systems. With the growing pressure from governments to decrease data centres' carbon foot print, energy conservation at data centres has become an increasingly important challenge. This has motivated research activities toward optimizing data center operations to reduce the total energy cost. This project proposes the development of an integrated data centre infrastructure management (iDCIM) tool that minimizes energy consumption by optimizing: (1) the workload assignment, optimally placing jobs at servers that minimize the overall energy consumption; (2) the cooling system operation, controlling the operation of the room cooling units and the server fans so that they work synergistically; (3) and; power distribution systems operation where the tool will resize the data center by turning off/on servers, network equipment and power distribution units according to workload changes. This project will develop the technology and tools required to transform this concept into a globally competitive product line catering to the $100B+ DC industry. The results promise considerable commercial revenues to Canada, the creation of 57 jobs, as well as a substantial amount of energy savings.