The low-latency requirements of 5G are expected to increase the demand for distributeddata storage and computing capabilities in the form of small-scale data centers (DC)located at the edge, near the interface between mobile and wired networks. These edgeDC will likely be of modular and standardized designs, although configurations, localresource constraints, environments and load profiles will vary and thereby increase theDC infrastructure diversity. Autonomy and energy efficiency are key objectives for thedesign, configuration and control of such data centers. Edge DCs are (by definition)decentralized and should continue operating without human intervention in the presenceof disturbances, such as intermittent power failures, failing components and overheating.Automatic control is also required for efficient use of renewable energy, batteries and theavailable communication, computing and data storage capacity.

These objectives demand data-driven models of the internal thermal and electricprocesses of an autonomous edge DC, since the resources required to manually defineand optimize the models for each DC would be prohibitive. In this thesis machinelearning methods that are implemented in a modular design are evaluated for thermalcontrol of such modular DCs. Experiments with small server clusters are presented, whichwere performed in order to investigate what parameters that are important in the designof advanced control strategies for autonomous edge DC. Furthermore, recent transferlearning results are discussed to understand how to develop data driven models thatcan be deployed to modular DC in varying configurations and environmental contextswithout training from scratch.

The first study demonstrates how a data driven thermal model for a small clusterof servers can be calibrated to sensor data and used for constructing a model predictivecontroller for the server cooling fan. The experimental investigations of cooling fancontrol continues in the next study which explores operational sweet-spots and energyefficient holistic control strategies. The machine learning based controller from the firststudy is then re-purposed to maintain environmental conditions in an exhaust chamberfavourable for drying apples, as part of a practical study how excess heat produced bycomputation can be used in the food processing industry. A fourth study describes theRISE EDGE lab - a test bed for small data centers - built with the intention to exploreand evaluate related technologies for micro-grids with renewable energy and batteries,5G connectivity and coolant storage. Finally the last work presented develops the modelfrom the first study towards an application for thermal based load balancing.