Data Replication and Power Consumption in Data Grids

While data grids can provide the ability to solve large-scale applications which require the processing of large amounts of data, they have been recognized as extremely energy inefficient. Computing elements can be located far away from the data storage elements. A common solution to improve availability and file access time in such environments is to replicate the data, resulting in the creation of copies of data files at many different sites. The energy efficiency of the data centers storing this data is one of the biggest issues in data intensive computing. Since power is needed to transmit, store and cool the data, we propose to minimize the amount of data transmitted and stored by utilizing smart replication strategies that are data aware. In this paper we present a new data replication approach, called the sliding window replica strategy (SWIN), that is not only data aware, but is also energy efficient. We measure the performance of SWIN and existing replica strategies on our Sage green cluster to study the power consumption of the strategies. Results from this study have implications beyond our cluster to the management of data in clouds.