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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.
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.
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
Because the location is remote and there is not time to build a normal facility. The main purpose for these data centers is to handle expansion in limited areas, or while a new data center is being upgraded.
There are another applications for keeping everything on a truck:
Valerie Walters Muscle Truck - a fitness centre that comes to you.
Office trailers
Mobile kitchen trailers
Hospital trailers
Mobile retail and dwelling units (Or shops and homes in containers).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The advantage is more on the installation and infrastructure end. Think of it more as "mobile homes" versus "traditional houses." With a regular house, you have to get the plumber, electrician, HVAC guy, carpenters, etc. to your site. For a mobile home or trailer, you keep all those people in one place, and they build houses over and over and over, on an assembly line. And as a result, "manufactured homes" are a lot cheaper than regular ones.
I think that's the model that you want to apply to datacenters: get rid of all the on-site installation and configuration, all the raised flooring and cabling; just have a team of people in a factory somewhere, installing and wiring all the servers into the containers, over and over. Then you just haul the container to the customer's site and plug it in. (In fact, since it's in a shipping container already, there's no reason why you do this in a place where labor is expensive; you might as well assemble them in some third-world country somewhere; it would almost assuredly be worth the small cost for sea freight -- most of a container's transportation costs are in the last few hundred miles anyway.)
The problem is mainly a chicken-and-egg one; in order to make "datacenters in a box" cheaper than traditional ones, you need to get an economy of scale going. You need to have an assembly line churning them out. If you don't have that, you're just taking the expense of a traditional data center and then adding a bunch of containerization and transportation costs to it.
It might take a very long time to catch on, because there's such an investment in traditional datacenters right now, but if I worked doing datacenter server installations, it's probably something I'd be a little concerned about. Unlike with 'manufactured homes' and regular houses, there isn't much social stigma over having your web site served from a trailer.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.