At Uptime Institute Conference, Rackable Systems has their Ice Cube Container parked in the parking lot open for all to visit. While talking to the Rackable staff, it became clear how brilliant they were to have their container easily accessible.  Their traffic has been high, because they are open during the whole conference vs, the few hours the exhibit area is. This means they are open the whole conference to potential customer's visits with their undivided attention with no competing traffic. Rackable staff says this is one of their best shows for interest in containers from qualified customers.

While I was in the Rackable container, Mark Monroe, Sun's Director of Sustainable Computing visited the container to get a little tour. I asked the Rackable guys how the conversation went. They joked, "he left green with envy."

It's funny, and he may have.  I am blogging from the session on modular "containerized" computer room concepts with Sun, Rackable, Intel, and Verari participating in a panel discussion.  There is lively engagement discussing the issues of using containers. The IBM and Dell guys were in the audience as well.

What is interesting to hear is all the different scenarios where people are thinking containers make sense for data center deployments.

One particular interesting piece of data is Verari Systems said the Microsoft Container Data Center deployed in Boulder, CO is operating at a PUE of 1.3, and should be expected to go to 1.2.

Canaccord Adams upgrades Rackable Systems (NASDAQ: RACK) from hold to buy based on container sales opportunity to Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook.

Canaccord Adams upgrades Rackable Systems (Nasdaq: RACK) from Hold to Buy with a $12.20 price target.
Analyst Mark Kelleher said, "We are upgrading RACK shares to BUY from Hold as we believe Rackable's container business will become a key growth driver for the company. We believe that adoption of modular data centers by Internet-based companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo will provide Rackable a differentiated product, and a path to top-line growth. We believe Rackable will meet our expectations for Q1 and will be able to attain its guidance for F2008. Additionally, we are raising our F2009 estimates given our growing confidence in Rackable’s opportunity for container sales at its top customers (Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook) and other potential adopters." [LJ]

This is kind of scary to think that an analyst figures Rackable will be able to grab server sales based on a container strategy. I wonder if Rackable will paint every container with a bright logo to advertise what is in each container? If they do, can Rackable apply for co-advertising dollars for Intel Inside.

thanks again to data center knowledge for their post getting my attention.

From all the traffic and interest in Containers. I created a new category on my blog for Containers.  In the month of April since Microsoft presented its Container Strategy in more detail at AFCOM, I've written 14 posts.  There have been snippets of information by Microsoft on containers in the past, but it looks like AFCOM was Microsoft's strategic move in Containers.

I expect there to be more news from vendors and customers.

/container/index.html is the link to the category.

I have on my list of things to do is to create RSS Feeds per category, but with Earth Day tomorrow, I won't get to this until later.