ABSTRACT
Distributed computational infrastructures as well as the applications and services that they support are increasingly becoming an integral part of society and affecting every aspect of life. As a result, ensuring their efficient and robust operation is critical. However, the scale and overall complexity of these systems is growing at an alarming rate (current data centers contain tens to hundreds of thousands of computing and storagedevices running complex applications), and issues related topower consumption, air conditioning, and cooling infrastructures are critical concerns impacting reliability as well as operating costs. In fact, power and cooling rates are increasing eightfold every year [1], and are becoming a dominant part of IT budgets. Addressing these costs while balancing multiple dimensions, including performance, quality of service, and reliability is thus an important and immediate task, since it can help service providers increase profitability by reducing operational costs and environmental impact, without significant reduction in the service level delivered.
