II-EN: BlueTool: Infrastructure for Innovative Cyberphysical Data Center Management Research

数据中心的能源消耗（也称为托管中心、服务器场、集群等）正在迅速增长，并迅速成为国家的重要组成部分？年度能源预算。令人惊讶的是，许多当代数据中心的设计和管理效率非常低，这主要是由于依赖民间传说技术，而不是基于确凿的科学证据。此外，由于缺乏实验测试平台，对替代配置进行实时测试的成本高昂，以及基于计算流体动力学的高复杂度离线模型进行模拟的时间过长，当前在绿色数据中心方面的研究和实验受到严重阻碍。BlueTool项目旨在通过以下方式解决这些问题：1）提高对管理数据中心的最新科学和工程研究的认识，以及2）提供研究和评估基础设施，以测试和开发新的方法来解决数据中心的低效率问题。BlueTool将促进使用整体网络物理概念，以促进节能和可持续数据中心的发展。它将利用亚利桑那州立大学（ASU）数据中心冷却技术和网络物理管理方面的最新研究进展，并为推进ASU和其他地方正在进行的该领域研究提供协同作用。BlueTool将包括：（a）一个在线工具，可以在物理布局、硬件和软件配置方面模拟数据中心的各种配置;（B）一个研究中心和门户网站，由亚利桑那州立大学的IMPACT实验室（http：impact.asu.edu）维护，提供各种可更新档案的数据服务，包括功率和热配置文件、多尺度低复杂度热和功率模型以及数据中心管理方法和软件。来自学术界和工业界的研究人员将能够使用BlueTool的在线咨询服务，通过新开发的技术来改善传统或现有配置的计算性能和能耗。

Energy consumption for data centers (a.k.a. hosting centers, server farms, clusters etc.) is rapidly increasing and is fast becoming a significant portion of the nation?s annual energy budget. Surprisingly, many of the contemporary data centers are designed and managed very inefficiently, mainly due to reliance on folklore techniques rather than those grounded in hard scientific evidence. In addition, contemporary research and experimentation in greening data centers is severely hindered by the unavailability of an experimentation test-bed, the cost of performing live tests of alternative configurations and the excessive long duration for performing simulations based on high-complexity offline models based on computational fluid dynamics.The BlueTool project aims to resolve these issues by: 1) increasing awareness of the latest scientific and engineering research on managing data centers, and 2) providing a research and evaluation infrastructure to test and develop new methodologies to address the inefficiencies of data centers. BlueTool will promote the use of holistic cyber-physical concepts to foster the development of energy-efficient and sustainable data centers. It will leverage recent research advances in cooling technologies and cyber-physical management for data centers at Arizona State University (ASU) and provide synergy for advancing the ongoing research in this field at ASU and elsewhere. BlueTool will consist of: (a) an online tool that can simulate various configurations of data centers, in terms of physical layout, hardware and software configuration; (b) a research hub and portal, maintained by the IMPACT Lab at ASU (http://impact.asu.edu), that offers data services on various updatable archives including power and thermal profiles, multi-scale low-complexity thermal and power models, and data center management methods and software. Researchers from both academia and industry will be able to use BlueTool's online consulting services to improve the computing performance and energy consumption of conventional or existing configurations with newly developed techniques.