News

posted on 02 April 2008 09:22

Microsoft is building huge data centers which will use containerised components, like Sun and Rackable container data centers.

Data Center Knowledge reports that a new Northlake, Illinois, data center will not have the traditional raised floor, glass house construction used throughout. Instead one floor will house 150 to 220 shipping containers filled with servers and storage and networking gear.

The containerised data center units will be aggregated together to provide resources for Microsoft's Live suite of cloud-based computing services; software applications delivered as a service to Internet-browser-using clients, ones with desktops, notebooks and other mobile Internet devices.

What Microsoft is doing is, in effect, buying in pe-configured sets of storage and server and networking resource in boxes. There are three potential suppliers: Sun with its Blackbox or MD S20; Rackable with its IceCube; and Verari. Microsoft is an existing Rackable customer.

Michael Manos, Microsoft's data center services director, spoke at Data Center world in Las Vegas yesterday, saying: "The entire first floor of Chicago is going to be containers. This represents our first container data center. The containers are going to be dropped off and plugged into network cabling and power."

They will be drop-shipped and placed slantwise across rows running across the floor. Their placement has to be influenced by the need for trucks to drive into and around the floor to drop off  the containers.

Microsoft is in a hurry to catch up with Google. Manos said: "It's a bold step forward. We're trying to address scale with the cloud level services. We were trying to figure the best way to bring capacity online quickly."

The Chicago facility's second floor will be constructed in traditional glass house style though. The facility is estimated to cost $500 million and occupy 500,000 square feet. The containerised components would boost power densities past 1Kwatt per square foot; so much for green energy conservation issues.

Microsoft will determine the server and storage resources it wants in the containers and then have them built to order. The actual contractor has not been named.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}