CloudPowerCap: Integrating Power Budget and Resource Management across a Virtualized Server Cluster

In many data centers, server racks are highly underutilized due to maintaining the sum of the server nameplate power below the power provisioned to the rack. The root cause of this rack underutilization is that the server nameplate power is often much higher than can be reached in practice. Although statically setting per-host power caps can ensure the sum of the servers’ maximum power draw does not exceed the rack’s provisioned power, it burdens the data center operator with managing the rack power budget across the hosts. In this paper we present Cloud- PowerCap, a practical and scalable solution for power cap management in a virtualized cluster. CloudPowerCap, closely integrated with a cloud resource management system, dynamically adjusts the per-host power caps for hosts in the cluster to respect not only the rack power budget but also the resource management system’s constraints and objectives. Evaluation based on an industrial cloud simulator demonstrates effectiveness and efficacy of CloudPowerCap.