Storage power management for cluster servers using remote disk access

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to disk storage power management for the cluster server systems which accesses remote active storage devices instead of turning on local storage devices. It is more economical to access remote storage than to spin up a standby disk both in terms of latency and power consumption. The number of active storage in the system is controlled according to the disk I/O load and demand. Unlike previous approaches to storage power savings, the proposed scheme does not rely on the special types or combinations of disk drives. The proposed scheme can be used for various storage configurations including internal disks, NAS, and SAN. © Springer-Verlag 2004.