Calculating the Minimum Bounds of Energy Consumption for Cloud Networks

This paper is aiming at facilitating the energy-efficient operation of an integrated optical network and IT infrastructure. In this context we propose an energy-efficient routing algorithm for provisioning of IT services that originate from specific source sites and which need to be executed by suitable IT resources (e.g. data centers). The routing approach followed is anycast, since the requirement for the IT services is the delivery of results, while the exact location of the execution of the job can be freely chosen. In this scenario, energy efficiency is achieved by identifying the least energy consuming IT and network resources required to support the services, enabling the switching off of any unused network and IT resources. Our results show significant energy savings that can reach up to 55% compared to energy-unaware schemes, depending on the granularity with which a data center is able to switch on/off servers.