Subject: OGF23 Workshop, "Using grid techniques to optimise energy efficiency"
From: Dave Berry <[email-masked]>
To: "Lee, Craig" <[email-masked]>, "Yahyapour, Ramin" <[email-masked]>, "Smith, Chris" <[email-masked]>, "Snelling, Dave" <[email-masked]>, "Strong, Paul" <[email-masked]>, "Fellows, Donal" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], "Kishimoto, Hiro" <[email-masked]>, "Grimshaw, Andrew" <[email-masked]>, "Stokes, Ellen" <[email-masked]>, "Fogel, Robert" <[email-masked]>, "Wieder, Philipp" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Osborne, Ian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:50:11 +0100

Dear all,

I have just submitted a proposal for an OGF23 workshop to look at how 
grid techniques might be used to schedule workloads in order to minimise 
energy consumption within the data centre or desktop grid.  I'm looking 
for people to participate in this workshop from OGF groups and it seems 
to me that your groups are the most relevant.

The IT industry is becoming increasingly aware of the cost of energy 
use: both the direct financial costs of the electricity supply and the 
"carbon" cost from cap-and-trade and similar schemes.  In addition, 
there is an increasing brand value in being seen to be "green" which is, 
in some markets, worth more than the actual carbon cost.  Against this 
background, we want to examine whether grid mechanisms can implement 
"carbon-aware" policies for IT utilisation.  One idea is that a 
scheduler in a data centre (or a similar system) could be aware of the 
detailed energy parameters of the IT resources under varying loads and 
could adaptively schedule tasks appropriately.  Of course the model 
would have to take into account the full energy costs, including 
airconditioning, UPS, etc.

We have models that we can build on, particularly those developed by the 
British Computer Society and the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres, as 
well as the Green Grid in the USA.  OGF has much relevant expertise, in 
scheduling, monitoring, usage records and information models.  The main 
aim of the workshop will be to stimulate activity that brings these 
areas of expertise to bear on optimising energy consumption.  The first 
session will set out the challenges and the second will concentrate on 
possible solutions and the OGF work that can be brought to bear.

Please let me know if you or someone else from your group will be 
interested in participating in this workshop (if it gets the go ahead 
from the programme committee).  For each group, it would be good to have 
a short presentation about your existing work and how you think it might 
be applicable to the problems - e.g. how usage records could be adapted 
to provide energy-based accounting; how CIM models might be extended to 
provide energy performance data; how scheduling algorithms could be 
adapted to optimise energy consumption; and how this would fit into the 
EGA reference model.

I attach a copy of the workshop proposal.  I am happy to take any 
suggestions for improvements.

Best wishes,

Dave Berry
Technology Lead, Grid Computing Now!
National e-Science Centre
15 South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA
+44 131 651 4039    www.gridcomputingnow.org 
<http://www.gridcomputingnow> <http://www.nesc.ac.uk>

To:
Grid Scheduling Architecture RG - Philipp Wieder, Ramin Yahyapour
Reference Model WG - David Snelling, Paul Strong
Usage Record WG - Donal Fellows, Xiaoyu Chen
OGSA WG - Hiro Kishimoto, Andrew Grimshaw, Ellen Stokes
Enterprise VP: Robert Fogel
Standards VP: Chris Smith
Also sent to Craig, as I know he is interested in OGF's contributions to 
the "Green IT" debate.