Online Capacity Provisioning for Energy-Efficient Datacenters

This book explores whether it is possible to design effective online dynamic provisioning algorithms that require zero future workload information while still achieving close-to-optimal performance. It also examines whether characterizing the benefits of utilizing the future workload information can then improve the design of online algorithms with predictions in dynamic provisioning. The book specifically develops online dynamic provisioning algorithms with and without the available future workload information. Readers will discover the elegant structure of the online dynamic provisioning problem in a way that reveals the optimal solution through divide-and-conquer tactics. The book teaches readers to exploit this insight by showing the design of two online competitive algorithms with competitive ratios characterized by the normalized size of a look-ahead window in which exact workload prediction is available.