HP’s 20’ POD Container, $600K for 291kW of data center space, IT equipment not included

February 2, 2010 Dave Ohara

HP just announced their 20 foot Performance-optimized Data Center POD.

HP POD is ideal for any enterprise customer requiring rapid white space growth

Quickly create data center space and deploy IT using HP Factory Express rack integration

Designed to support requirements for N+N power redundancy

Pay as you grow to minimize up front capital outlay - add additional HP PODs as you need more data center space

Decrease operating expenses through better energy efficiency with PUEs as low as 1.25

More technical specs are here.

Is this the future of cloud computing data centers? At numbers that are $2 million per MW of physical data center space before power and chiller plant, it will be interesting to see who buys the HP POD.

It makes sense to consider a hybrid site that could hook up power, water and network to containers, then another space that is the traditional data center space for equipment.

Maybe on my next trip to the bay area (next week), I should try and stop by HP. I know the PR team has offered to set up a meeting with the HP container design engineers. The total costs for a 2 MW data center build out would be interesting to discuss.

Cloud Computing, Open Source, Containers, & Federal gov’t – new apps.gov model

January 21, 2010 Dave Ohara

What happens when you combine cloud computing, open source, containers and a federal agency who wants to change how data center services are provided? You get a solution like NASA’s Nebula Cloud Computing Platform.

The container is here from DataCenterKnowledge.

NASA’s Nebula: The Cloud in a Container
December 2nd, 2009 : Rich Miller

The Verari data center container housing the NASA Nebula cloud computing application arrives at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

What do you get when you combine cloud computing and data center containers? You get NASA’s Nebula, the space agency’s new data powerhouse, which provides on-demand computing power for NASA researchers. Nebula was recently cited by federal CIO Vivek Kundra as an example of the government’s ability to “leverage the most innovative technologies.”

The Cloud Computing is built on open source SW for eucalyptus

The media event had Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO. In the speech below Vivek 2000 – 2006 points out the federal data centers have doubled their energy use. He is actually anti-data center growth for the traditional model. There are 8 GSA data centers, and 23 homeland security data centers. All built on old models with 100s of millions dollars spent to build data centers the size of city block. There needs to be a new way where there are lower costs and a a greener impact.

Apps.gov is the highlighted site demo’d in the above presentation.

IBM partners with APC to reduce up front capital costs and TCO

January 11, 2010 Dave Ohara

Data Center construction is typically expensive and long lead time. Modularity and containers are discussed as ways to address these issues. IBM’s partnership with APC is one effort that tries to change the data center construction industry.

The official press release is here.

APC and IBM Announce Availability of the IBM Portable Modular Data Center Solution Based on APC’s Award-Winning InfraStruxure® Architecture

West Kingston, RI, January 11, 2010 — APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated critical power and cooling services, today announced an expanded relationship withIBM to offer an IBM Portable Modular Data Center container version based on APC’s award-winning InfraStruxure^® architecture and IBM’s global services capabilities. IBM’s PMDC provides a fully functional data center in a shipping container with a complete physical infrastructure including power and cooling systems and remote monitoring. By integrating APC InfraStruxure products into the container it builds on the global alliance between APC and IBM announced in 2006 when APC was selected as a key data center physical infrastructure provider to IBM's Scalable Modular Data Center (SMDC) and later when APC solutions were chosen as the foundation for the IBM High Density Zone (HDZ) solution, which allows customers to deploy a high density environment rapidly within an existing data center.

With HP’s acquisition of EYP and EDS. IBM needs to work on end-to-end solutions in data centers.

The partnership enables clients to quickly design and build a data center in nearly any working environment using IBM Global Services’ capabilities and a standardized data center architecture, reducing up front capital and on-going operational costs.

One of the biggest obstacles to this approach will be entrenched IT and facilities organizations who are used to the status quo of data center construction and operation. But, if anyone has the ability to reach the ears of the CIO and CFO it is IBM.

I am currently evaluating whether I’ll attend IBM’s Pulse 2010 event in Las Vegas Feb 21- 24.

Container Data Center form a silo cylinder or shipping container box

December 10, 2009 Dave Ohara

Clumeq has a new super computer repurposing their decommissioned Van de Graff particle accelerator.

The Quebec site is on the campus of Université Laval inside a renovated van de Graaf silo, with an innovative cylindrical layout for the data center. This cluster will feature upwards of 12,000 processing elements. Compute racks will be distributed among three floors of concentrical rings with a total surface area of 2,700 sq.ft. with an IT capacity of approximately 600 kW.

DataCenterKnowledge picked up the news.

Wild New Design: Data Center in A Silo
December 10th, 2009 : Rich Miller

A diagram of the design of the CLUMEQ Colossus supercomputer, from a recent presentation by Marc Parizeau of CLUMEQ.

Here’s one of the most unusual data center designs we’ve seen. The CLUMEQsupercomputing center in Quebec has worked with Sun Microsystems to transform a huge silo into a data center. The cylindrical silo, which is 65 feet high and 36 feet wide with two-foot thick concrete walls, previously housed a Van de Graaf particle accelerator. When the accelerator was decommissioned, CLUMEQ decided to convert the facility into a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster known as Colossus.

Here is the youtube video.

This idea may seem strange, but it is part of connecting the building to IT equipment. Microsoft just did this showing their Windows Azure Containers with the cooling system integrated in the container.

Sun has their own page on Clumeq.

When supercomputing consortium CLUMEQ designed its high-performance computing (HPC) system in Quebec, it was able to house it in the silo of a former particle accelerator on the Université Laval campus. The structure's 3-level cylindrical floor plan was ideal for cooling the 56 standard-size racks, and enabled the university to retain a treasured landmark.

Background

CLUMEQ is a supercomputing consortium of universities in the province of Quebec, Canada. It includes McGill University, Université Laval, and all nine components of the Université du Québec network. CLUMEQ supports scientific research in disciplines such as climate and ecosystems modeling, high energy particle physics, cosmology, nanomaterials, supramolecular modeling, bioinformatics, biophotonics, fluid dynamics, data mining and intelligent systems.

Microsoft Container has evaporative water cooling

November 18, 2009 Dave Ohara

Information week has an interview with Microsoft President Bob Muglia. Which reveals Microsoft’s container is providing evaporative cooling in the containers.

InformationWeek: There's a next-generation container on the show floor?

Bob Muglia: In Chicago, we used the previous generation of container. The one on the show floor incorporates advances coming out of Microsoft Research. *~~Our servers have no fans in them.~~ Ambient air is drawn over a membrane onto which a small amount of water is released. I think it's two gallons an hour. The slow release of water drops the temperature of ambient air coming in through a system of louvers by 20 or 25 degrees and that's sufficient to keep the servers cool enough. You have to realize servers run comfortably at 95 degrees. Maybe you and I are not comfortable working at 95 degrees, but servers are.

*Note: this quote is struck out due to a reader pointing out the server fan noise. See this post for specifics.