EEffSim: A discrete event simulator for energy efficiency in large-scale storage systems

The complexity of distributed storage systems makes it difficult to evaluate fundamentally new data placement policies for energy efficiency in real-world systems. Simulation studies allow us to quickly prototype and test energy-efficient management policies. Unfortunately, there is a lack of tools in the public domain that support such studies. We introduce EEffSim, a highly configurable energy simulator for general-purpose multi-server storage systems. EEffSim supports data migration, locking protocols, write offloading, and opportunistic spin-down. It also models the energy consumption of heterogeneous storage devices including SSDs.