POWER MANAGEMENT FOR IDLE SYSTEM IN CLUSTERS

• US 20110106935A1
• Filed: 10/29/2009
• Published: 05/05/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: SRINIVASAN, VAIDYANATHAN
• Application Number:
  US12/608,203
• Publication Number:
  US 20110106935A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3209 Monitoring remote activity, e.g. over telephone lines or network connections
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3096 wherein the means or processing minimize the use of computing system or of computing system component resources, e.g. non-intrusive monitoring which minimizes the probe effect: sniffing, intercepting, indirectly deriving the monitored data from other directly available data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/505 considering the load
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/12 Arrangements for remote connection or disconnection of substations or of equipment thereof
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/50 in wire-line communication networks, e.g. low power modes or reduced link rate

Abstract

Clusters of systems employed to increase computation capacity for specific services like the web or protocols such as the file transfer protocol. Broadly contemplated herein is an arrangement involving a set of compute nodes that perform the actual task and load balancer systems that monitor and distribute work among the compute nodes, taking into account the current load and remaining compute capacity available in each of the nodes. Power saving techniques can be applied to nodes in the cluster that are not actively running the workload due to lower utilization of the total cluster capacity.

Claims

1. A method power management in a clustered system, the method comprising:

monitoring utilization among nodes of the clustered system;

balancing work loads among nodes of the clustered system based on the utilization monitoring, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises monitoring an idle node; and

avoiding activation of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node based on the utilization monitoring of the idle node.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises obtaining utilization information of the idle node solely when work is requested of the idle node.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises packet sniffing for general node utilization information.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3, wherein said packet sniffing comprises

examining network packet content;

and

modeling a request being processed by a node.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the step of avoiding activation comprises avoiding individual polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

6. The method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the step of avoiding individual polling comprises avoiding daemon-based polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

7. The method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the step of avoiding individual polling comprises avoiding periodic polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

8. A data processing system comprising at least a processor and a memory, further comprising a network monitor which monitors utilization among nodes of a clustered system;

a load balancer which balances work loads among nodes of the clustered system based on monitoring by the network monitor; and

the network monitor configured to monitor an idle node by avoiding activation of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

9. The system as claimed in claim 8, wherein the network monitor is configured to obtain utilization information of the idle node solely when work is requested of the idle node.

10. The system as claimed in claim 8, wherein the network monitor is configured to employ packet sniffing for general node utilization information.

11. The system as claimed in claim 10, wherein the network monitor is configured to examine network packet content and model a request being processed by a node.

12. The system as claimed in claim 8, wherein the network monitor is configured to avoid individual polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

13. The system as claimed in claim 12, wherein the network monitor is configured to avoid daemon-based polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

14. The system as claimed in claim 12, wherein the network monitor is configured to avoid periodic polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

15. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine, the program of instructions when executed on the machine is capable of performing the steps of:

monitoring utilization among nodes of a clustered system;

balancing loads among nodes of the clustered system based on the utilization monitoring, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises monitoring an idle node; and

avoiding activation of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node based on the utilization monitoring of an idle node.

16. The program storage device as claimed in claim 15, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises obtaining utilization information of the idle node solely when work is requested of the idle node.

17. The program storage device as claimed in claim 15, wherein the utilization monitoring comprises packet sniffing for general node utilization information.

18. The program storage device as claimed in claim 15, wherein the step of avoiding activation comprises avoiding individual polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

19. The program storage device according to claim 18, wherein the step of avoiding individual polling comprises avoiding daemon-based polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.

20. The program storage device as claimed in claim 18, wherein the step of avoiding individual polling comprises avoiding periodic polling of the idle node when there is no work request of the idle node.