Green virtual desktop: Design and operation

It is estimated that the ICT industry contains not less than one billion personal computers (PC), with power consumption ranging from 100 to 200 W per workstation. Virtualization and Thin Client technologies, mediated by broadband network links will have a very significant impact on efforts to reduce energy consumption and to enhance data security throughout the ICT industry. Besides, virtualization is quickly getting into the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market, promising a better (centralized) energy management with means of consolidation and resource reuse. Indeed, multiple virtual machines (VM) or platforms, running Virtual Desktops (VD), can be hosted on a single physical server, requiring only hypervisors and adequate desktop delivery protocols to deliver the VD service to distant users on any suitable device. In this paper, we propose to deliver a VD service over a federation of data centers (DC), sparsely connected to some nodes of the core network. The proposed model aims to provide an adequate resource dimensioning at the DC and the network while minimizing the inherent energy consumption. We prove by means of simulations the importance of user profiling and activity prediction in avoiding over-dimensioning, especially at the DCs. We also show the interest of energy-aware modes at the servers.