RoboGeek

Data center in a box?

Sun to unveil data center in a box  We are?  That sounds cool, I hope that really is what we're unveiling later today.  The article claims we'll be demonstrating a standard-sized shipping container containing racks of computer gear, water cooling system, air filtration system, etc.  It's a box you can quickly deploy just by dropping it (literally?) into a vacant piece of land, run power, water, and network connections to it, and you're good to go.

Sounds cool.  I remember reading a rumor-story of Google working on a similar idea.  And in the article they liberally quote from Gerald Murphy, a Robert Francis Group analyst who six years ago designed shipping container-based computer systems for customers performing classified work.  He said:  "If they're thinking they invented it, they're wrong".  Heh, howzabout if you wait until the announcement to see if we claim to have invented this.  Okay?

And speaking of spooks (er.. classified work) and deployable computer systems.  The scenario that came into my mind was ... is this meant for, say, military operations where they're invading a country and need to quickly parachute in a bunch of equipment?  The modern American Military Machine depends on high technology and what could be higher tech than a rack of computer servers deployed onto the battlefield?  Yeah, the military has gobs of servers back home and they can more easily deploy sattelite communications to give access to the computation resources.  Maybe they will want the computation on the battlefield?

The article says the gizmo can withstand a force 9 times the force of gravity, and equates that to a six-inch drop.  Hmm, doesn't sound like a parachute drop to me.  Who knows.  Certainly this gizmo could be attractive to rapidly growing organizations.

For example in my organization (Java SE, and in general the Santa Clara Campus) we're having trouble with crowded lab/server areas.  At the same time there's some underdeveloped land on the campus where we might erect a building or two later, but if we had one of these blackbox gizmos could put some servers on campus without having to erect a building.

What's amuzing is this video clip that Sun StorageTek published on YouTube.  I linked to that video on an earlier blog posting (click on the second of the videos).  Coincidentally (?) the video shows capacity being expanded by dropping big boxes into neat columns in a warehouse.  Hmmm...

And that video raises a couple interesting points.  If you react to expanding needs with the idea of "I'll just add more" then what of the environmental consequences?  The more computational gizmos you deploy, whether it's in a traditional data center, in an office environment, or whether it's in a black box in the parking lot, the more capacity you add to your system the more power and energy you've expended.  So far humanity has only found methods for making electricity that involve introducing poisons into the environment.  When you say "I'll just add more" you're also saying "I'll just poison the environment some more".

The CNET article doesn't discuss whether this portable data center gizmo has any attempt to optimize power usage per unit of computation capacity.
(2006-10-17 07:16:06.0) Permalink