Data center energy cost minimization: A spatio-temporal scheduling approach

Cloud computing is supported by an infrastructure known as Internet data center (IDC). As cloud computing thrives, the energy consumption and cost for IDCs are exploding. There is growing interest in energy cost minimization for IDCs in deregulated electricity markets. In this paper we study how to leverage both geographic and temporal variation of energy price to minimize energy cost for distributed IDCs. To this end, we propose a novel spatio-temporal load balancing approach. Using reallife electricity price and workload traces, extensive evaluations demonstrate that the proposed spatio-temporal load balancing approach significantly reduces energy cost for distributed IDCs.