C-Oracle: Predictive thermal management for data centers

Abstract

Designing thermal management policies for todaypsilas power-dense server clusters is currently a challenge, since it is difficult to predict the exact temperature and performance that would result from trying to react to a thermal emergency. To address this challenge, in this paper we propose C-Oracle, a software infrastructure for Internet services that dynamically predicts the temperature and performance impact of different thermal management reactions into the future, allowing the thermal management policy to select the best reaction at each point in time. We experimentally evaluate C-Oracle for thermal management policies based on load redistribution and dynamic voltage/frequency scaling in both single-tier and multi-tier services. Our results show that, regardless of management policy or service organization, C-Oracle enables non-trivial decisions that effectively manage thermal emergencies, while avoiding unnecessary performance degradation.