Thermal-aware relocation of servers in green data centers

Rise in inlet air temperature increases the corresponding outlet air temperature from the server. As an added effect of rise in inlet air temperature, some active servers may start exhaling intensely hot air to form a hotspot. Increase in hot air temperature and occasional hotspots are an added burden on the cooling mechanism and result in energy wastage in data centers. The increase in inlet air temperature may also result in failure of server hardware. Identifying and comparing the thermal sensitivity to inlet air temperature for various servers helps in the thermal-aware arrangement and location switching of servers to minimize the cooling energy wastage. The peak outlet temperature among the relocated servers can be lowered and even be homogenized to reduce the cooling load and chances of hotspots. Based upon mutual comparison of inlet temperature sensitivity of heterogeneous servers, this paper presents a proactive approach for thermal-aware relocation of data center servers. The experimental results show that each relocation operation has a cooling energy saving of as much as 2.1 kW·h and lowers the chances of hotspots by over 77%. Thus, the thermal-aware relocation of servers helps in the establishment of green data centers.