FIT4Green : energy aware ICT optimization policies

Protecting the environment by saving energy and thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions is one of today’s hottest and most challenging topics and is of a rapidly growing importance in the computing domain. The motivation and reasons for optimizing energy consumption from ecological and business perspectives are clear. However, the technical realization still is way behind expectations. One reason might be that technical problems range from pure hardware issues (e.g., low-power devices, energy harvesting, etc.) to software to cooling issues. This paper discusses recent findings and first ideas regarding policies and strategies for energy optimization and the development of a generic plug-in for managing data centers, accompanied by the introduction of the concept of “Green Service Level Agreements (GSLA)”. We discuss the general structure (generic architecture) of the plug-in and sketch some of the embedded policies. It is also to be noted that all results are part of the recently started FIT4Green project, funded by the European Union.