Service Rate Control of On/Off Servers

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According to Natural Resources Canada, data centres support every sector of the Canadian economy and consume roughly one percent of the total electricity consumed in Canada. When sizing data centres, they are typically designed to accommodate peak demand. A consequence is that much of the time, the vast majority of servers are idle yet still consuming energy. If one could determine how to effectively turn servers off (and on), there are clearly significant gains to be made, both in terms of direct savings for data centre operators, but also for Canadian society due to the corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The tradeoff to consider is that performance may decrease (in terms of waiting times) if servers need to be turned on to cope with rising demand, and that frequently turning servers on and off may reduce the lifetime of the equipment.