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1. E. Hyytiä, R. Righter and S. Aalto, Task Assignment in a Server Farm with Switching Delays and General Energy-Aware Cost Structure, Performance Evaluation, vol. 75--76, pp. 17-35, 2014 (link)(bib)

   Abstract: We consider the task assignment problem to parallel servers with switching delay, where servers can be switched off to save energy. However, switching a server back on involves a constant server-specific delay. We will use one step of policy iteration from a starting policy such as Bernoulli splitting, in order to derive efficient task assignment (dispatching) policies that minimize the long-run average cost. To evaluate our starting policy, we first analyze a single work-conserving M/G/1 queue with a switching delay and derive a value function with respect to a general cost structure. Our costs include energy related switching and running costs, as well as performance-related costs associated with both means and variability of waiting time and latency. The efficiency of our dispatching policies is illustrated with numerical examples.