GreenDSS tool for data center management

As society shifts towards the Internet to conduct a greater share of communications and commerce, the demand for storage and processing of information is increasing. This is represented by the growth in data centers and energy usage. Traditionally, energy usage with respect to the greening of data centers has been a secondary concern. However, with the escalating total cost of ownership, and the ability to use smart meters this has become more important to monitor for increased savings. This paper describes the research conducted leading to the development of a software tool called GreenDSS (Decision Support System for Green Data Centers). The paper presents the research and development of this decision support system from an interdisciplinary perspective. It proposes and tests relevant hypotheses, explains knowledge discovery through data mining techniques and concludes with strategies towards a more sustainable operation of data centers in organizations for enhanced energy management.