Rapid and accurate energy models through calibration with IPMI and RAPL

Energy consumption in Cloud and High Performance Computing platforms is a significant issue and affects aspects such as the cost of energy and the cooling of the data center. Host level monitoring and prediction provides the groundwork for improving energy efficiency through the placement of workloads. Monitoring must be fast and efficient without unnecessary overhead, to enable scalability. This precludes the use of Watt meters attached per host, requiring alternative approaches such as integrated measurements and models. IPMI and RAPL are subject to error and partial measurement, which may be mitigated. Models allow for prediction and more responsive measures of power consumption, but require calibrating. The causes of calibration error are discussed, along with mitigation strategies, without overly complicating the underlying model. An outcome is a Watt meter emulator that provides hosts level power measurement along with estimated power consumption for a given workload, with an average error of 0.20W.