The IT Containers That Went To War

1sockchuck writes: Parachuting a container full of IT gear into a war zone is challenging enough. In the mountains of Afghanistan, helicopters had to deliver modular data centers in three minutes or less, lest the choppers be targeted by Taliban rockets. UK vendor Cannon recently spoke with DataCenterDynamics, sharing some of the extreme challenges and lessons learned from deploying portable data centers for military units in deserts and mountains. The same lessons (except, hopefully, with a lower chance of being shot) would apply in lots of other extreme enviroments, too.

Comments

what?

[hjf]

I don't understand why you would need a datacenter in a war zone.

Assuming you're able to get it running, what are you going to connect it to anyway? What is it going to do?

Re:what?

[Aelanna]

The modern military does a lot of computing. Computer systems keep track of the positions of troops and vehicles, and intelligence units constantly monitor and analyze signals that might be enemy communications. It doesn't surprise me that things like mobile data centers are a thing.

Re:what?

[halivar]

The "Internet of Things" concept may be new to our households, but the military has been using it for as long as they've had wigwams waving their little flags around. For military commanders, access to accurate, comprehensive data is an extreme force multiplier.

Re:what?

[silas_moeckel]

A secure reliable network is not something they have so you need computing resources that are more local. Sure a sat uplink is nice, the latency sucks and the bandwidth is pretty limited.

Re:what?

[CanadianMacFan]

The article talked about having units in Camp Bastion which was in a war zone and was a camp that could hold 28,000 people. It handled the logistics for Afghanistan and was a major staging area. They would have needed a lot of computing power there to manage logistics, telecommunications, aircraft control, running a city, in addition to planning military operations.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Computing should be done in a less hostile and hard to reach environment.

What magical resources provide "secure and reliable network uplink/downlink" without having a physical footprint on the ground?

What magical resources eliminate the high latency of satellite uplinks, which makes things like drones, fire control systems, and real-time intelligence systems next-to-useless?

Oh right, you don't know shit about the capabilities or needs of the modern military, but feel qualified to opine about how inept the military is, because you have a web browser.

Moving hardware to the combat theater is difficult

Yes.

wasteful

Not if it's worth the cost. And, turns out... it's worth the cost.

dangerous

Yes.

time consuming

Yes.

gives the enemy yet another target

Yes - but you may have noticed that modern networks benefit from fault tolerant designs, where they route around failure. If all of your computation in-theater is tied to a satellite uplink, then all the enemy has to do to paralyze you is neutralize that one uplink. With computation and a distributed footprint in-theater, they have to disable each and every modular datacenter to accomplish the same task. Lot harder to blow up 500 datacenter containers than it is to disrupt communications with a single satellite, champ.

Also, all of this stuff being expensive and hard and time-consuming is exactly why we have lots of men with big guns guarding them, to make sure that the resources aren't wasted or destroyed by the enemy. Whether they're spread across the mountains of Afghanistan or sitting in a Datacenter in Arlington, Virginia... they still need those guys with big guns standing post.

Whine somewhere else about how much smarter you are than the military... you're tedious.

Re:what?

[jfdavis668]

Take it from someone who has used them. It is a collaborative system. The system continues to work if you knock out one piece. Each vehicle has a computer on board with all the data it needs for situational awareness. You need larger data sites to process the data. It is so much easier to type in a supply request than try to read it to someone over a radio with voice. Cuts down transmission times and errors. All those requests need to be gathered together and forwarded to a higher headquarters, so they need some kind of processing center. If that one is knocked out, you send it to the backup site. If you are not in communication range, your system holds it until you are. Same way with enemy contact reports. They are gathered together, processed and then the results shared with everyone. Now you know about the minefield on your route that was reported by another unit.

Re:what?

[rogoshen1]

Thank you for your service to your country AC. We'll inform the Joint Chiefs of your novel recommendations and have them implement it immediately. Not a one in the entire chain of command thought of these points, at all.

Docker vs. LXC

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Reading the title, I was expecting a Docker vs LXC flamefest...

Data Center = Logistics Support

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clearly, logistics is the hard part of fighting a war."
- Lt. Gen. E. T. Cook, USMC, November 1990

"Gentlemen, the officer who doesn't know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless."
- Gen. George S. Patton, USA

"Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible."
- ADM Hyman Rickover, USN

"Forget logistics, you lose."
- Lt. Gen. Fredrick Franks, USA, 7th Corps Commander, Desert Storm

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

"I am tempted to make a slightly exaggerated statement: that logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes."
- ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

"Because of my wartime experience, I am insistent on the point that logistics know-how must be maintained, that logistic is second to nothing in importance in warfare, that logistic training must be widespread and thorough..."
- VADM Robert B. Carney, USN

"Logistic considerations belong not only in the highest echelons of military planning during the process of preparation for war and for specific wartime operations, but may well become the controlling element with relation to timing and successful operation."
- VADM Oscar C. Badger, USN

" in its relationship to strategy, logistics assumes the character of a dynamic force, without which the strategic conception is simply a paper plan."
- CDR C. Theo Vogelsang, USN

"Logistics is the stuff that if you don't have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as."
- General Nathaniel Green, Quartermaster, American Revolutionary Army

"Strategy and tactics provide the scheme for the conduct of military operations, logistics the means therefore."
- Lt. Col. George C. Thorpe, USMC

"Only a commander who understand logistics can push the military machine to the limits without risking total breakdown."
- Maj.Gen. Julian Thompson, Royal Marines

"There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war."
- Carl von Clausevitz

"In modern time it is a poorly qualified strategist or naval commander who is not equipped by training and experience to evaluate logistic factors or to superintend logistic operations."
- Duncan S. Ballantine, 1947

"The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines. Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics."
- Fleet ADM Ernest J. King, in a 1946 report to the Secretary of the Navy

"A sound logistics plan is the foundation upon which a war operation should be based. If the necessary minimum of logistics support cannot be given to the combatant forces involved, the operation may fail, or at best be only partially successful."
- ADM Raymond A. Spruance

"The line between disorder and order lies in logistics"
- Sun Tzu

"Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics."
- Tom Peters - Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell, Fast Company, March 2001

"Logistics sets the campaign's operational limits."
- Joint Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States

"Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point."
- Jomini: Precis de l' Art de la Guerre. (1838)

"Behind every great leader there was an even greater logistician."
- M. Cox

"Logistics ... as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work."
- Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

"The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics."
- RADM Henry Eccles, U.S. Navy

"My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."
- Alexander

Re: Hmmm...if the enemy is watching...

[jmac_the_man]

Seriously?

The containers are dropped at a drop point near the bunker where they are needed. They're then dragged inside the bunker. Since the bunker is more mortar resistant than the helicopter, the enemy's best chance of preventing the system from being set up is to shoot down the helicopter.

Re:Abstinence

[The Real Dr John]

I am glad someone brought up the fact that we should be thinking about why we are even engaged in a war of aggression against a poor, nearly unarmed country on the other side of the world, rather than second guessing how the military delivers computers to the field. Questioning US militarism in such circumstances seems more important than discussing the details of battlefield IT. Americans seem a bit too comfortable with wars of aggression, to the point where they will discuss how to implement the details of battlefield IT rather than talking about why we are there in the first place. Your tax dollars at work.