ReRack: power simulation for data centers with renewable energy generation

Data centers operating cost are dominated by their power consumption. Renewable energy sources can reduce the operating costs when correctly selected. Nevertheless, this is a non trivial task because it should consider different energy sources (wind, solar), storage alternatives (batteries, grid-tie), workload, historical weather patterns, incentives, and service agreement penalties. These are the basic factors, but the model should be extensive to consider other factors like power gating support. This paper introduces ReRack, an extensible simulation infrastructure that can be used to evaluate the energy cost of a data center using renewable energy sources. ReRack is composed of two main components, a simulation and an optimization component. The simulation component explores the cost effectiveness of renewable energy generation. It requires a model that can simulate both the data center power usage and the location-dependent variability of the power generation source (solar and wind). The ReRack optimization component finds the best ratio of renewable energy sources for a given location and workload.