A user perspective on energy profiling tools in large scale computing environments

The growth of power consumption in ICT infrastructures emphasizes the importance of monitoring their usage and finding available room for improvement. Users can choose among several existing tools to determine the energy profile of a running application in order to provide more sustainable software. We conducted a field study in the SURFsara data center and we experimented with the tools available, assessing them in light of their informative power. We derived some recommendations for ICT users and infrastructure operators that highlight the relation between the intended use of the profile and the easiness of running a specific tool. We categorize users in two types: the generic user, who is interested in summary statistical results on power measurements and the software developer that intends to delve in the code details in order to reprogram the application more efficiently. We concluded that SLURM and Score-P are suitable for both types of users when their requirements are thoroughly studied and taken into account.