Noise Aware Scheduling in Data Centers

As the demand for large scale computing is rapidly increasing to serve billions of users across the world, more powerful and densely packed server configurations are being used. Often in developing countries, and in small and medium enterprises, it is hard to place such servers in sound-proof server rooms. Hence, servers are typically placed in close proximity to employees. The noise from the cooling fans in servers adversely affects employees' health, and reduces their productivity. In this paper, we provide a framework for computer architects to measure the acoustic profile in a data center along with the temperature profile, and estimate the sound power levels at points of interest. Additionally, we studied the noise levels obtained upon using algorithms targeted at homogenizing the temperature profile. We found that these algorithms result in high noise levels, sometimes above the permissible levels. So, we propose two heuristics to redistribute workloads in a data center such that noise can be reduced at certain target locations. We obtain a noise reduction of 2-13 dB when compared with uniform workload distribution, and upto 16 dB as compared to temperature aware workload placement, with a reduction of at least 5-6 dB in 75% of the cases. The performance overhead is limited to 1%.