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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?"
I'm sure RBN would love "Datacenter in a Box." As soon as the authorities begin sniffing around the datacenter can be trucked somewhere else. How long before someone steals one and sells it on ebay.
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?
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?
> Intel says an approach using a "data center in a box" could be 30 to 50 percent cheaper.
Steps:
1. Get a box.
2. Put your junk in the box.
3. Make her access the box.
and watch the love, baby...
Have you ever signed the bill for having AC installed for your computer room in an existing building? While that is just 1 expense of many, it makes me think rule #1 is not accurate.
This is a good idea that I've seen used in certain situations. There are downsides of course but for a company on a budget or in flux w.r.t. facilities this can be a good solution.
You see, by closing the door, the actual data contained within' is either there or not there.
What they've done is run a network cable to that same box to check this, thereby solving one of the most fundamental questions of the universe!
Like i said, absolute genious!
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
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The military already uses these. The Marines uses them to bring their network onto a ship during transit and then into a tent when deployed.
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.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
(1) Microwave link or mobile repeater. Costly and needs preplanning, but no external cables. (2) "Portable" can mean "nice quiet diesel or LPG powered generator in the back". Theoretically you could have it up and running while it's being delivered, without waiting for it to reach its destination. I think the target word is "hurry", not "cheap". Fast setup, as in fast market capture or disaster recovery is the word. And I know there are better ways to do DR but not all of your customers think ahead like that, do they? Only the ones who probably don't need you in the first place.
Remember, if all of your customers had perfectly-run data centres, you'd probably be out of a job.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Prefab houses are an increasingly popular method for home construction. They're not really "portable", except when they're delivered from the factory to the "installation site". They're not interesting because of their containers, but because of the economics and other efficiencies in delivering and installing them.
Instead of the house builders building each house as a completely custom job, in an unfamiliar site, in all kinds of weather, with only the tools and materials they bring to some residential area, they've got full control at the factory. They don't have to ship all the excess materials that they used to have to ship back out as garbage. They can keep a pipeline filled with houses they're building, and deliver them very shortly after they're ordered, even quicker than they actually build them. And since so much is standardized, they can mass produce them and otherwise get scale economies that reduce costs. Since they aren't inventing a new, complex device with every home a new, arbitrary blueprint, they are skilled in more than their tools and materials, but rather skilled in producing that exact house, with solved problems presenting higher quality homes quicker.
All that is also true of datacenters. The weather doesn't present so much of a problem avoided, because the datacenter is usually installed in an existing building. But all the rest of the efficiencies are in effect. So datacenters can be cheaper, better, and deployed quicker. This trend makes a lot of sense.
--
make install -not war
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
2007: government worker loses unencrypted laptop
2017: government worker loses unencrypted portable data center
It's a little bit of a conceptual shift from datacenters of old... and it's not for everyone. Having said that, this is exactly the sort of thing we've been talking about for a while where I work ever since Sun talked about their product.
Data center processing capabilities have increased dramatically over the years, but generally the problem I have seen in most datacenters these days is simply that they are not designed for the heat and power load per square foot that blades and high-density systems require. Most modern datacenters were designed and/or built in the 80s and 90s when they had very specific requirements as regards power and heat load per square foot... and that was reasonable at the time. The higher density systems such as blades are a great idea, and provide much more processing capability per square foot than traditional racked servers... however, it has become tough to keep up with the heat output and power requirements of these on a per rack basis. I know our datacenter where I work that was built in 1995 has been retrofitted no less than four times in the last few years to increase cooling capacity, and we're rapidly reaching the limits of what we can do with the physically constrained space we have. At the moment, if we add a new power feed or AC unit, we will actually need to remove racks to put it in. Given our racks are currently running at an average 85% physical capacity already you can see where we have a problem.
These sort of portable datacenters though are only for those who design their systems correctly. Most applications these days can leverage "fat" back end systems (databases and so forth) with "thin" front-end application servers. My proposal that's going through the mill right now was to invest in one of these containers to migrate all of the front-end systems into that datacenter, leaving only the data and storage (SAN) sitting in the existing datacenter. That way, we can eliminate approximately 60% of our servers, which themselves make up about 40% of the heat and power load in our datacenter today. That way we can continue to expand the storage (which is desperately needed, we just have no more floor space for SAN) and leverage either powerful blade servers or powerful standard rack servers as consolidated database clusters and possibly virtual machine space. Where we need application-server space, we can put a server out in the "trailer" and connect it across a fat link into the existing datacenter (bonded gigabit), thereby providing incredible flexibility.
The cost may seem prohibitive, but what are our other options? Right now, our only other option is to actually build a new dedicated datacenter building. The cost of that is incredibly prohibitive, and we've been playing catchup for a long time as far as trying to meet our user demand in a rapidly growing user base while being seriously constrained on space. The cost of one of these trailers is actually an incredible bargain compared to the cost of proper design, architecture, engineering and actually constructing a new building to house our ever growing application requirements.
So what about server failures? Personally, I feel that the best way to proceed is to run up the trailer to about 85% utilized, leaving lots of idle servers in-place. Network boots and stuff like that ought to provide rapid provisioning within the trailered data center, so in the event of a failure you just use network boot to bring up another node and call for service. Hey, we already have all of our servers under maintenance with the manufacturer anyway, and most of the time this is exactly what we do. Plus, what if we grow again? Add another trailer. Simple, cost-effective and efficient.
The security aspect? Leverage your already existing datacenter. Use that as your data source, leave as little actual customer data on the trailered servers as you can. If you start getting constrained on space, start moving your database servers out to the trailers as well, but connect them back to your SAN in the old DC. By doing s