Abstract:
Developing countries often have access to limited energy resources. This makes it crucial to utilize available energy resources as efficiently as possible. The limited energy resources also result in frequent and sometimes prolonged power cuts, during which enterprises rely on backup power sources such as uninterrupted power supplies (UPS) and electric generators. Building on the recently published work on Anyware [8], we propose Anyware-DC: an architecture that helps to reduce energy utilization in such environments, both when power is available and during power cuts. At the same time, it ensures no perceptible difference in user experience and no data loss due to power cuts. Anyware reduces energy usage by providing office users laptops instead of desktops, while maintaining performance levels through a centralized compute cluster. Our basic insight is that in the presence of power cuts, only the routers and the central cluster needs to be provided power; the laptops can continue to run on their own batteries. This reduces the load on the UPS allowing it to supply power for longer, thus saving generator fuel costs. Our simulation results show that over a period of 24 hours, this architecture reduces energy usage by up to 75% compared to one not using Anyware, and by up to 20% compared to one using basic Anyware.
