On The Fundamental Energy Tradeoffs of Geographical Load Balancing

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fundamental energy tradeoffs in geographical load balancing for data centers, highlighting how optimizing for green energy use and cost can sometimes increase total energy consumption, depending on service efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to analyze energy tradeoffs in geo-distributed data centers considering service efficiency, providing insights into optimal load balancing strategies.

Findings

Green energy utilization may increase total energy consumption.

Cost optimization can lead to higher overall energy use.

Tradeoff analysis depends on data center service efficiency.

Abstract

Geographical load balancing can optimize the utilization of green energy and the cost of electricity by taking the advantages of green and price diversities at geographical dispersed data centers. However, higher green energy utilization or lower electricity cost may actually increase the total energy consumption, and is not necessarily the best option. The achievable energy tradeoffs can be captured by taking into consideration of a defined service efficiency parameter for geo-dispersed data centers.