Non-invasive cyber-physical system for data center management

We present a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) designed to improve the efficiency of Cloud Data Centers. The hardware part of the system consists of a number of dual functionality devices powered with scavenged thermal energy. The devices can perform two different functions: (i) act as wireless sensing nodes to monitor environmental parameters inside the server room that are important for system reliability and security; (ii) provide active cooling to the CPUs of the data center as smart heat-sinks. Starting from the empirical characterization of the energy harvesting module, we determine the amount of energy that can be harvested from a CPU heat dissipation while performing different tasks. We then analyze the amount of energy required to supply the low power sensors or to actuate the cooling fan. The CPS exploits a software simulator of the network of smart heat-sinks to predict the status of the devices. The simulator works in conjunction with a management algorithm used to administrate t...