DataCenterKnowledge reports on Mike Manos's statement, Microsoft is embracing data centers containers.
The data center container revolution has officially arrived. And Microsoft's cloud computing initiative is driving it.
Microsoft will forego a traditional raised-floor environment in its new data center in Chicago, and will instead fill one floor of the huge facility with up to 220 shipping containers packed with servers, the company said today.
Versus other companies concept demonstrations of data center containers, Microsoft follows its infamous "Embrace, Extend, and Innovate" strategy made public with focus on the Internet in 1994.
In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): all participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community - determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community. Phase 3 (Innovate): move into a leadership role with new Internet standards as appropriate, enable standard off-the-shelf titles with Internet awareness. Change the rules:
WindowsMicrosoft Data Centers become the next-generation Internet tool of the future.
And the datacenterknowledge article continues
Microsoft is embracing containers as the key to building scalable, energy-efficient cloud computing platforms. The company's bold move is an affirmation of the potential for containers to address the most pressing power, cooling and capacity utilization challenges facing data center operators. The Chicago facility is part of the company’s fleet of next-generation data centers being built to support its Live suite of "software plus services" online applications.
But the design of the Chicago data center will go beyond the optimizations seen in Microsoft’s new facilities in Quincy, Washington and San Antonio.
"The entire first floor of Chicago is going to be containers," Microsoft director of data center services Michael Manos said this morning in his keynote at Data Center World in Las Vegas. "This represents our first container data center. The containers are going to be dropped off and plugged into network cabling and power." The second floor of the immense facility will be a traditional raised-floor data center, Manos said.
"It's a bold step forward," said Manos. "We're trying to address scale with the cloud level services. We were trying to figure the best way to bring capacity online quickly."
