Server Workload Analysis for Power Minimization using Consolidation

Server consolidation has emerged as a promising technique to reduce the energy costs of a data center. In this work, we present the first detailed analysis of an enterprise server workload from the perspective of finding characteristics for consolidation. We observe significant potential for power savings if consolidation is performed using off-peak values for application demand. However, these savings come up with associated risks due to consolidation, particularly when the correlation between applications is not considered. We also investigate the stability in utilization trends for low-risk consolidation. Using the insights from the workload analysis, two new consolidation methods are designed that achieve significant power savings, while containing the performance risk of consolidation. We present an implementation of the methodologies in a consolidation planning tool and provide a comprehensive evaluation study of the proposed methodologies.