Utilizing Conducted Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) for Low-Cost Server-Level Power Monitoring in Data Centers

利用传导电磁干扰 (EMI) 进行数据中心的低成本服务器级电源监控

• 批准号: 2152357
• 负责人: Mohammad Islam
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Arlington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2152357&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Utilizing; Conducted; Electromagnetic; Interference; EMI

The increasing dependence on the Internet and cloud computing has made data centers indispensable in modern society. However, operating these data centers requires a massive amount of electricity that contributes to the global energy crisis. Therefore, managing data center power usage to achieve energy efficiency is critical for a sustainable cyberinfrastructure. Towards that, server power monitoring plays a crucial role by offering valuable insights for exploring the optimization potential in data center operation. Moreover, fine-grained power monitoring can be vital in safeguarding data centers from outages and downtimes due to overloading and identifying anomalous server behaviors or malicious cyberattacks. However, server-level power monitoring has not been widely adopted due to the high cost associated with dedicated power meters at every server. This project breaks the cost barrier by developing a novel low-cost server-level power monitoring system that does not need dedicated power sensors at every server. Instead, it extracts multiple servers' power consumption data from single-point voltage measurements of the data center power distribution system. Beyond cost savings, the fine granular power monitoring achieved through this project can have a far-reaching impact by motivating data center operators to adopt more efficient and environment-friendly techniques. This project's research results and tools will be translated into educational materials for undergraduate and graduate courses. The project will also incorporate research activities involving women, underrepresented minority groups in STEM, and persons with disabilities through lab visits and summer internships. The enabling insight for this project's novel power metering approach is that the power factor correction (PFC) circuits in the server power supply reveal their power usage information into the data center power network through high-frequency (kHz level) conducted electromagnetic interference (EMI). The conducted EMIs from servers can be measured from the data center voltage for server-level power monitoring. However, there are several technical challenges to realizing a conducted EMI monitoring system in data centers. The generation and propagation of conducted EMI in a data center environment are not well understood and how the data center architecture and the environment affect the server EMI is unexplored. In addition, extracting many servers' power consumption data from a single sensor poses fundamental challenges of source separation. Lastly, high-frequency EMI extraction and source separation require extensive and high-precision computation, while developing a real-time and cost-effective sensing system is non-trivial. In light of these challenges, this project's research efforts are organized through three research thrusts. The goal of Thrust 1 is to bridge the knowledge gap in conducted EMI in data centers through foundational research into conducted EMI generation, propagation, and extraction. Thrust 2 focuses on developing novel source separation algorithms to extract server-level power from a single sensor. Thrust 3 develops computation and cost-effective sensor hardware and software tailored to real-time monitoring. This project contributes to the knowledge base of source separation techniques and efficient real-time sensor data processing. The project advances the foundational understanding of conducted EMI in data center power networks. Moreover, conducted EMI is generated by many different types of equipment requiring regulated power. Hence, this project's outcome can stimulate the development of novel techniques dealing with conducted EMI issues in other domains. To foster such developments, all experiment data, codes, and designs of this project will be made publicly available.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

对互联网和云计算的日益依赖使得数据中心在现代社会中不可或缺。然而，运营这些数据中心需要大量的电力，这导致了全球能源危机。因此，管理数据中心的电力使用以实现能源效率对于可持续的网络基础设施至关重要。为此，服务器电源监控发挥着至关重要的作用，为探索数据中心运营中的优化潜力提供了有价值的见解。此外，细粒度的电源监控对于保护数据中心免受过载造成的中断和停机以及识别异常服务器行为或恶意网络攻击至关重要。然而，由于与每个服务器处的专用功率计相关联的高成本，服务器级功率监视尚未被广泛采用。该项目通过开发一种新型的低成本服务器级电源监控系统打破了成本障碍，该系统不需要在每台服务器上安装专用的电源传感器。相反，它从数据中心配电系统的单点电压测量中提取多个服务器的功耗数据。除了节省成本外，通过该项目实现的精细粒度电源监控还可以激励数据中心运营商采用更高效、更环保的技术，从而产生深远的影响。该项目的研究成果和工具将转化为本科生和研究生课程的教材。该项目还将通过实验室访问和暑期实习，纳入涉及妇女、STEM中代表性不足的少数群体和残疾人的研究活动。该项目的新型功率计量方法的实现洞察力在于，服务器电源中的功率因数校正（PFC）电路通过高频（kHz级）传导电磁干扰（EMI）将其用电信息透露给数据中心电网。来自服务器的传导EMI可以从数据中心电压测量，用于服务器级功率监控。然而，在数据中心中实现传导EMI监测系统存在若干技术挑战。数据中心环境中传导EMI的产生和传播尚未得到很好的理解，数据中心架构和环境如何影响服务器EMI也未得到探讨。此外，从单个传感器提取多个服务器的功耗数据对源分离提出了根本性的挑战。最后，高频EMI提取和源分离需要大量和高精度的计算，而开发实时和具有成本效益的传感系统是不平凡的。鉴于这些挑战，该项目的研究工作通过三个研究重点来组织。Thrust 1的目标是通过对传导EMI产生、传播和提取的基础研究，弥合数据中心传导EMI的知识差距。Thrust 2专注于开发新的源分离算法，以从单个传感器中提取服务器级功率。Thrust 3开发了计算和成本效益的传感器硬件和软件，用于实时监控。该项目有助于源分离技术和有效的实时传感器数据处理的知识库。该项目推进了对数据中心电力网络中传导EMI的基本理解。此外，传导EMI是由需要稳压电源的许多不同类型的设备产生的。因此，这个项目的结果可以刺激新技术的发展，处理在其他领域的传导EMI问题。为了促进这种发展，所有的实验数据，代码，和设计的这个项目将公开。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

项目成果

Towards Server-Level Power Monitoring in Data Centers Using Single-Point Voltage Measurement

使用单点电压测量实现数据中心服务器级电源监控

• DOI: 10.1145/3560905.3568079
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys '22
• 作者: Gupta, Pranjol;Talukder, Zahidur;Islam, Mohammad A.;Nguyen, Phuc
• 通讯作者: Nguyen, Phuc

Market Mechanism-Based User-in-the-Loop Scalable Power Oversubscription for HPC Systems

• DOI: 10.1109/hpca56546.2023.10071006
• 发表时间: 2023-02
• 期刊: 2023 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)
• 作者: Md Rajib Hossen;Kishwar Ahmed;M. A. Islam