The datacenter as a computer : an introduction to the design of warehouse-scale machines / Luiz André Barroso and Urs Hölzle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barroso, Luiz André.

Contributor:

Hölzle, Urs.

Series:

Synthesis lectures on computer architecture, 1932-3243 ; # 6.

Synthesis lectures on computer architecture, 1932-3243 ; # 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cloud computing.

Electronic data processing--Distributed processing.

Electronic data processing.

Data centers.

Computer networks--Design and construction.

Computer networks.

Computer networks--Energy consumption.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (120 p.)

Place of Publication:

San Rafael, Calif. (1537 Fourth Street, San Rafael, CA 94901 USA) : Morgan & Claypool Publishers, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As computation continues to move into the cloud, the computing platform of interest no longer resembles a pizza box or a refrigerator, but a warehouse full of computers. These new large datacenters are quite different from traditional hosting facilities of earlier times and cannot be viewed simply as a collection of co-located servers. Large portions of the hardware and software resources in these facilities must work in concert to efficiently deliver good levels of Internet service performance, something that can only be achieved by a holistic approach to their design and deployment. In other words, we must treat the datacenter itself as one massive warehouse-scale computer (WSC). We describe the architecture of WSCs, the main factors influencing their design, operation, and cost structure, and the characteristics of their software base. We hope it will be useful to architects and programmers of today's WSCs, as well as those of future many-core platforms which may one day implement the equivalent of today's WSCs on a single board.

Contents:

Introduction

Warehouse-scale computers

Emphasis on cost efficiency

Not just a collection of servers

One datacenter vs. several datacenters

Why WSCs might matter to you

Architectural overview of WSCs

Storage

Networking fabric

Storage hierarchy

Quantifying latency, bandwidth, and capacity

Power usage

Handling failures

Workloads and software infrastructure

Datacenter vs. desktop

Performance and availability toolbox

Cluster-level infrastructure software

Resource management

Hardware abstraction and other basic services

Deployment and maintenance

Programming frameworks

Application-level software

Workload examples

Online: web search

Offline: scholar article similarity

A monitoring infrastructure

Service-level dashboards

Performance debugging tools

Platform-level monitoring

Buy vs. build

Further reading

Hardware building blocks

Cost-efficient hardware

How about parallel application performance

How low-end can you go

Balanced designs

Datacenter basics

Datacenter tier classifications

Datacenter power systems

UPS systems

Power distribution units

Datacenter cooling systems

CRAC units

Free cooling

Air flow considerations

In-rack cooling

Container-based datacenters

Energy and power efficiency

Datacenter energy efficiency

Sources of efficiency losses in datacenters

Improving the energy efficiency of datacenters

Measuring the efficiency of computing

Some useful benchmarks

Load vs. efficiency

Energy-proportional computing

Dynamic power range of energy-proportional machines

Causes of poor energy proportionality

How to improve energy proportionality

Relative effectiveness of low-power modes

The role of software in energy proportionality

Datacenter power provisioning

Deployment and power management strategies

Advantages of oversubscribing facility power

Trends in server energy usage

Conclusions

Modeling costs

Capital costs

Operational costs

Case studies

Real-world datacenter costs

Modeling a partially filled datacenter

Dealing with failures and repairs

Implications of software-based fault tolerance

Categorizing faults

Fault severity

Causes of service-level faults

Machine-level failures

What causes machine crashes

Predicting faults

Repairs

Tolerating faults, not hiding them

Closing remarks

Hardware

Software

Economics

Key challenges

Rapidly changing workloads

Building balanced systems from imbalanced components

Curbing energy usage

Amdahl's cruel law

References.

Notes:

Part of: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.

Series from website.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-105).

Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 8, 2009).

Cited in:

Compendex

INSPEC

Google scholar

Google book search

ISBN:

1-59829-557-8

OCLC:

352874891