On the Energy-Proportionality of Data Center Networks

Data centers provision industry and end users with the necessary computing and communication resources to access the vast majority of services online and on a pay-as-you-go basis. In this paper, we study the problem of energy proportionality in data center networks (DCNs). Devices are energy proportional when any increase of the load corresponds to a proportional increase of energy consumption. In data centers, energy consumption is concern as it considerably impacts on the operational expenses (OPEX) of the operators. In our analysis, we investigate the impact of three different allocation policies on the energy proportionality of computing and networking equipment for different DCNs, including 2-Tier, 3-Tier, and Jupiter topologies. For evaluation, the size of the DCNs varies to accommodate up to several thousands of computing servers. Validation of the analysis is conducted through simulations. We propose new metrics with the objective to characterize in a holistic manner the energy proportionality in data centers. The experiments unveil that, when consolidation policies are in place and regardless of the type of architecture, the size of the DCN plays a key role, i.e., larger DCNs containing thousands of servers are more energy proportional than small DCNs.