QoS-aware energy-efficient workload routing and server speed control policy in data centers: A robust queueing theoretic approach

Abstract

Operating cloud service infrastructures requires high energy efficiency while ensuring a satisfactory service level. Motivated by data centers, we consider a workload routing and server speed control policy applicable to the system operating under fluctuating demands. Dynamic control algorithms are generally more energy-efficient than static ones. However, they often require frequent information exchanges between routers and servers, making the data centers’ management hesitate to deploy these algorithms. This study presents a static routing and server speed control policy that could achieve energy efficiency similar to a dynamic algorithm and eliminate the necessity of frequent communication among resources. We take a robust queueing theoretic approach to response time constraints for the Quality of Service (QoS) conditions. Each server is modeled as a processor sharing queue, and the concept of uncertainty sets defines the domain of stochastic primitives. We derive an approximative upper bound of sojourn times from uncertainty sets and develop an approximative sojourn time quantile estimation method for QoS. Numerical experiments confirm the proposed static policy offers competitive solutions compared with the dynamic algorithm.