In recent years, power and thermal control has become one of the most serious concerns for large-scale data centers that are rapidly expanding the number of hosted servers. In addition to reducing operating costs, precisely controlling power consumption and heat dissipation is an essential way to avoid system failures caused by power capacity overload or overheating due to increasingly high server density (e.g., blade servers). Power and thermal control becomes even more challenging as many data centers start to adopt the virtualization technology for resource sharing, leading to increased utilization and power consumption.
This CAREER project addresses the following research topics. 1) We plan to design and evaluate advanced power and thermal control algorithms, based on feedback control theory, to achieve analytic assurance of control accuracy and system stability. First, we propose novel control algorithms at multiple layers to control power and application performance for virtualized server environments. Second, we propose highly scalable hierarchical algorithms to control the power consumption of an entire large-scale data center. Third, we will design cascaded control algorithms to control heat dissipation and handle thermal emergencies by coordinating with power control loops. 2) We propose power and thermal control middleware. Our middleware will find the optimal coordination strategy for multiple control loops to work together at different layers, and then configure them to achieve the desired control functions. In addition, our middleware can automate the procedure of controller design and analysis for a universal control solution. 3) We will also investigate other components such as hard drives and network switches, as well as the controllability and feasibility problems, in order to provide a complete power and thermal control framework for today's large-scale data centers.
