Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
datacenter simulation
multi-model
meta-model
sustainability
performance
M3SA: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Climate-Impact with Multi- and Meta-Model Simulation and Analysis
🤖 AI Summary
Existing data center simulators often rely on single-model approaches, limiting their ability to accurately assess both performance and carbon emissions while lacking adaptability to diverse operational scenarios. This work proposes the M3SA framework, which establishes a multi-model cooperative simulation architecture by integrating discrete-event simulation with meta-model ensembles. Implemented within the open-source OpenDC platform, M3SA enables joint dynamic evaluation of performance and climate impact. The framework supports cross-workload and multi-timescale “what-if” analyses, accurately predicts operational phenomena such as failures, and facilitates CO₂-aware scheduling and other optimization strategies. Experimental results reproduce and extend prior studies, and the implementation is publicly released.
📝 Abstract
Datacenters are vital to our digital society, but consume a considerable fraction of global electricity and demand is projected to increase. To improve their sustainability and performance, we envision that simulators will become primary decision-making tools. However, and unlike other fields focusing on key societal infrastructure such as waterworks and mass transit, datacenter simulators do not yet combine multiple independent models into their operation and thus suffer from issues associated with singular models, such as specialization, and lack of adaptability to operational phenomena. To address this challenge, we propose M3SA, a datacenter simulation and analysis framework that uses discrete-event simulation to predict, for each model, the impact on climate and performance under various realistic datacenter conditions, and then combines these predictions. We design an architecture for simulating multiple concurrent models (Multi-Model), a technique for integrating the results of multiple models into a Meta-Model, and a procedure for quantifying Meta-Model accuracy. Through experiments with an M3SA prototype, we show that (i) M3SA can reproduce and enhance peer-reviewed experiments; (ii) M3SA can predict operational phenomena (e.g., failures) of datacenters, running fundamentally different workload traces; (iii) M3SA enables various types of what-if and how-to analysis, such as how to configure CO2-aware migration over yearly energy-production patterns. M3SA has been integrated into the open-source simulator OpenDC and is available at: https://github.com/atlarge-research/opendc-m3sa.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Multi-Model Simulation
Meta-Model Integration
Discrete-Event Simulation
Datacenter Sustainability
Climate-Impact Analysis
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