EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF AGGREGATE POWER METRICS IN DATA CENTERS

In recent years, climate change, depletion of conventional energy sources and rising energy costs have led to an increased focus on sustainability. Within the Information Technology (IT) sector, data centers are significant energy consumers. The first steps towards reducing power consumption in data centers are to monitor it and to determine the heavy hitters. Unfortunately, fine-grain power information is often not readily available within data center environments. In this paper, we conduct an exploratory analysis of aggregate power data in a data center. We collect data from the power infrastructure of a data center in Palo Alto, CA, as well as from a data center in Bangalore, India. We examine the data in increasing detail, and reveal the opportunities and challenges for disaggregating data center power consumption data.