“Microsoft is in the process of building the industry's first container-based datacenter.”
The whole datacenter topic is one I expect to find myself talking about more and more over the next year. A whole new game is emerging that some call Cloud Computing. One way of building these datacenters is through the use of containers and Michael Manos from our Data Center Services group talked about this yesterday at the AFCOM Data Center World conference. (Wow, there is a world conference for datacenters).
Christian Belady in the same group as Michael has a rather interesting job title - Principal Power and Cooling Architect.
You may chuckle but this stuff is important. Both the datacenters and and the power and cooling stuff. Datacenters that are so large you can see them from the moon will require a lot of power….and a lot of cooling. In an increasingly eco friendly world, this needs to be done in an environmentally friendly way.
I can’t say a great deal about our datacenter group but I will say this – they’re incredibly thorough about their work. In a way I wish some other groups were to be honest. When you build something that costs many many millions you need to be damn sure you chose the right place and approach. These guys impress me a lot and I’m not alone
bonus link - Microsoft's James Hamilton has made some interesting presentations on this and related topics and blogged about this far more eloquently than I just did :)
Is this not the same thing that Sun was doing a year or two ago?
this actually Shipped from Sun over a year and half ago - and was well-exhausted through the blogosphere back then. Where the hell have you been?. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/10/17/In-A-Box
Industry's First? Come again? This is a product that's been shipped repeatedly, and while an excellent idea, this pompom waving on the behalf of MS is pretty ludicrous.
Sun was the first, but don't forget Google and HP, both have them and Google has patents on them.
MS is the last by far.
Microsoft became the first company to publicly announce a data center designed out of shipping containers. The announcement was made by Mike Manos, who leads the Microsoft Global Foundations Data Center team, at
Steve, that MS Chicago facility must be immense, I wonder how long before we see container ports cropping up awfully close to power plants! :)
After having spent many years in the transportation business, this story is somewhat fascinating... there
can anyone confirm if Su have them in a production facility?
also, those Sun boxes look great in black but not so great when you want to keep these things as cool as possible no?