IBM has been awarded a U.S. patent (#8,549,125) for a technique that enables data center operators to dynamically redistribute workloads to lower-powered or underutilized systems.
IBM said the innovation is similar to how energy utilities offer consumers ways to automatically access and pay for alternative energy sources such as wind or solar to reduce their impact on the environment. This allows loads to be routed through network devices, systems and software that process the service while consuming the least amount of electricity.
“The efficient, distributed cloud computing model has made it possible for people to bank, shop, trade stocks and do many other things online, but the massive data centers that enable these apps can include many thousands of energy-consuming systems,” said Keith Walker, IBM Master Inventor and co-inventor on the patent. “We have invented a way for cloud service providers to more efficiently manage their data centers and, as a result, significantly reduce their environmental impact.”
