Multi-aspect hardware management in enterprise server consolidation

An autonomic manager for enterprise server hardware management, called AMP, is described. AMP is designed to handle multiple aspects of hardware management and to work in conjunction with other management components, in particular application managers, in a way that reduces energy waste, protects server health, and preserves a high degree of autonomy both for itself and for the managers with which it works. AMP interacts with other managers in two ways: (1) exchange of nominal control over individual servers; and (2) provision of a synthetic cost function giving AMP´s assessment of relative desirability of using different servers. The high-level architecture of AMP is discussed, with particular focus on the way it effects a natural decomposition of the combined hardware-and-application management problem, and on initial versions of the algorithms it uses to manage server power states and determine the cost function. AMP´s viability in practice is demonstrated via prototype implementation in which it operates on real servers in collaboration with a state-of-the-art application manager. The overall system behavior is investigated via simulation.