Ecovisor: A Virtual Energy System for Carbon-Efficient Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces an ecovisor, a virtual energy system that enables applications to optimize their carbon-efficiency by managing renewable energy unreliability through software control.

Contribution

It presents the design and implementation of a novel ecovisor that virtualizes physical energy systems for application-level control and optimization.

Findings

Applications can independently optimize carbon-efficiency using the ecovisor.

The prototype demonstrates improved carbon-efficiency compared to general policies.

Multiple applications can concurrently manage their energy use effectively.

Abstract

Cloud platforms' rapid growth is raising significant concerns about their carbon emissions. To reduce emissions, future cloud platforms will need to increase their reliance on renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, which have zero emissions but are highly unreliable. Unfortunately, today's energy systems effectively mask this unreliability in hardware, which prevents applications from optimizing their carbon-efficiency, or work done per kilogram of carbon emitted. To address this problem, we design an "ecovisor", which virtualizes the energy system and exposes software-defined control of it to applications. An ecovisor enables each application to handle clean energy's unreliability in software based on its own specific requirements. We implement a small-scale ecovisor prototype that virtualizes a physical energy system to enable software-based application-level i) visibility into variable grid carbon-intensity and renewable generation and ii) control of server power usage and battery charging/discharging. We evaluate the ecovisor approach by showing how multiple applications can concurrently exercise their virtual energy system in different ways to better optimize carbon-efficiency based on their specific requirements compared to a general system-wide policy.