  Analyzing data centers with thermal-aware optimization techniques is a viable
approach to reduce energy consumption of data centers. By taking into account
thermal consequences of job placements among the servers of a data center, it
is possible to reduce the amount of cooling necessary to keep the servers below
a given safe temperature threshold. We set up an optimization problem to
analyze and characterize the optimal setpoints for the workload distribution
and the supply temperature of the cooling equipment. Furthermore under mild
assumptions we design and analyze controllers that drive the data center to the
optimal state without knowledge of the current total workload to be handled by
the data center. The response of our controller is validated by simulations and
convergence to the optimal setpoints is achieved under varying workload
conditions.
