Intel Considering Portable Data Centers

miller60 writes "Intel has become the latest major tech company to express interest in using portable data centers to transform IT infrastructure. Intel says an approach using a "data center in a box" could be 30 to 50 percent cheaper than the current cost of building a data center. "The difference is so great that with this solution, brick-and-mortar data centers may become a thing of the past," an Intel exec writes. Sun and Rackable have introduced portable data centers, while Google has a patent for one and Microsoft has explored the concept. But for all the enthusiasm for data centers in shipping containers, there are few real-world deployments, which raises the question: are portable data centers just fun to speculate about, or can they be a practical solution for the current data center expansion challenges?"

Comments

It has to be more expensive

[llZENll]

Rule #1 in technology, anything portable is more expensive than if it were not portable. If its so cheap to use a crate, why not just put the stuff in the crate in a warehouse instead, bypassing the crate and all of the work and design involved with shoving and fitting the stuff in the crate?

Re:It has to be more expensive

[lucifuge31337]

Understand that my point is to stop the ghettoization you've obviously seen: again, real, proper data centers don't operate that way. Every been to 365 Main in SF? Horrible. 60 Hudson? It's a travesty. This is what happens when you colo: morons put whatever they want in whatever rack you lease them and plug it into anything they can get an extension cord to. This is not a real data center.

With containerized units being used as commodity infrastructure (which is increasingly easy to do with things like VMWare), this all goes away. No, it won't cover every possibility. You're still going to need somewhere to put those machines with weird cards, be they satellite connectivity, PSTN, etc. But the pure processing power portions of the DC can be kept "clean" and to spec with a few simple rules: the machines are what they are. If they break, an identical unit will be swapped back in.

Yes, it takes a different approach to server utilization, but it's one that becoming increasingly common in both large and small traditional data centers.

I'm tired of spaghetti. I'm tired of some idiot plugging both inputs of PDUs into two whips on the same generator. I'm tired of morons putting server labels over the only cooling vents on the front/back of the machine (if they even bother to label them). I'm tired of waiting for some kid at the colo facility to find a crash cart to tell me what some customer's server that has gone unreachable says on the console. I'm tired of idiots not racking machines with rails, and simply stacking a few on top of each other.

And let's face it - the guy putting his hands ont he equipment in a noisy DC is usually not the best trained or most experienced. And that's not going to change any time soon. It's simple economics.

These portable DCs are my OCD dream.

Re:It has to be more expensive

[Antique Geekmeister]

Ahh. This makes much more sense. I'd mod you up if I had the points available. I did resent the implication that I wasn't familiar with "real data centers". I've been involved in plenty of work in centers that are very "real" indeed, thank you, and in what you refer to as "ghetto" operations.

I am also sick of spaghetti. The avoidance of spaghetti, alone, is a reason to pick consistent hardware manufacturers and spend the extra $500/server to get good Dell or HP systems instead of pizza boxes, and be able to rackmount them well and cable them consistently so you don't have to invent a new airflow solution for every half-rack of equipment. And if I see one more system with a side-vent or top-vent or other cutesy airflow solution that I have to stuff into a rack of normal servers, I'll scream.

By the way, for your crash cart fun and games, I've gotten extremely fond of using virtualization on an over-powered server to provide me with remote console access to the guest domain, without having to rely on the local manpower or expensive remote KVM's. You might look into it, now that it's become integral to so many distributions.

Why it probably won't work

[Z80xxc!]

It seems to me that there would be too many hassles for this to ever work. The equipment in a data center is expensive, and that equipment doesn't usually like being jostled around in a truck, let alone bouncing around at sea for a while. Although in theory it's a great idea, I just don't see it ever really working out. Also, what about security? Data centers need good security. If it's so easily portable, then it wouldn't be that hard for someone to just take off with one, whereas you can't exactly stick a real data center on your getaway car. TFA suggests a warehouse to store the things in to address security and such, but doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of having them be mobile?

Play games with taxes and states, too

[timothy]

If you have a business which can be housed in a portable structure of any kind, it makes it more likely you can move it across a border (state or national) when that makes sense, or just seem inclined to do so if the local powermongers decide they want more (of your) pie.

Coal mines? Hard to do it.

Hospitals? Difficult.

Big factories? Tough.

Data centers? If built into containers or container-friendly, you can start packing now ;)

(On the other hand, it also means that data-centric companies can angle for that famous and annoying "corporate welfare" by flirting with various states and municipalities seeking better goodies like tax abatements, "free" infrastructure additions, etc.)

timothy

Re:Play games with taxes and states, too

[garett_spencley]

While this is probably one of many possibilities introduced, I think what most people are missing isn't that this is a 'mobile' data center... but that it's 'modular'.

In the case of Sun's Black Box project it's literally a data center in a standard shipping container. You can do almost anything with that.

Here's one scenario.

Imagine a web hosting company start-up. Their goal is grow as large as a big server provider like The Planet but they don't have several million to invest and even if they did, they won't have the customers yet.

What a traditional start-up might do is rent servers from a provider and resell them. But with these portable data centers you could just rent a secured warehouse somewhere (much cheaper than building a multi-million dollar data center) and then start with ONE portable datacenter. When you get enough customers you simply stick another portable data center right next to it. Or on top of it. Or whatever.

In essence you have a modular data center that will easily scale and can be put pretty much anywhere.

I think that's what most people are missing. The summary said "mobile" whereas I think the real point is "modular". You can pick it up and drop it pretty much anywhere and it can tack on to your existing infrastructure easily etc. Or, as one video clip demonstrating Sun's Black Box said "If you fill this thing with our high end servers you've got one of the world's top 200 super computers".

Point being it just opens up so many possibilities that weren't there before.

Why it probably will work

[Nefarious Wheel]

Because, with virtual server architectures being on the rise, a new data centre can mean one or two large and very generic servers and simplified connections. This means the configurations can be highly standardised. The real difficulty would be ensuring your network of backed up virtual server files were configured in a portable fashion and properly documented, as in config management database. You wouldn't need to worry about the builds so much, just the right config of virtual drives. Get it right and you'd be back up and running in an hour. Get it wrong and you'd never recover.

I guess the rules are pretty much the same as for standard data centres, but since these will be looked at as a DR solution as often as not, being able to break a standard one out of the warehouse and put it online fast -- for any number of different configs -- would put it on any IT risk manager's shopping list.

Security?

[Billly Gates]

To have tens of millions of dollars just sitting in a nice convenient portable container that can be hauled by anyone with a truck seems all too tempting.

Now if some of the data in their included credit numbers and maybe social security numbers of employees as well then you can make money by identity theft as well.

I suppose only a minimum wage paid security guard is guarding it too so anyone with a truck and fake uniform and nametag with a bogus company name can just drive in and convince the guard to drive off with it.

Seems risky.

Perfect for greedy companies...

[SeaFox]

Large corporations will love this. Every time the property tax abatement runs out on their current data center location, they can just lay off all the employees and truck the data center to another city.

Coming soon: Portable Oil Refineries.

Army

[Anonymous Coward]

I work IT in the Army. Portable is a bad idea because I wouldn't know what to do wtih my free time if I weren't constantly tearing down and setting up. Starting over every 3 months keeps me on my toes.