GreenSLAs - Providing Energy Consumption Flexibility in DCs through Energy-aware Contracts

This paper describes how eco-motivated extensions added to the traditional SLA concept can provide levels of flexibility in the data centre management that enable the data centre to reduce the energy consumption, improve the environmental footprint and lower internal costs. A close collaboration with both the IT customer and the data centre’s energy provider are key to this approach which is formalized by means of the GreenSLA concept building on the three main components: Flexibility, GreenKPIs and collaboration. Performance decisions regarding the energy consumed by the services are taken and translated to actions to be executed to save energy while at the same time guaranteeing the contract agreements.