Microsoft to Build Giant Data Center from Containerized Gear

Published: April 9, 2008

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is no shortage of people who are mocking the idea of plunking server and storage gear in shipping containers to build new data centers, but apparently Microsoft is not one of them. The company is an early and apparently an enthusiastic adopter of this cyberpunk style of data centers.

According to a report on Data Center Knowledge, Microsoft will be building a new data center on the outskirts of Chicago using between 150 and 220 standard shipping containers that have been outfitted with power, cooling, and racks for industry standard servers, storage, and networking gear. Michael Manos, director of data center services at Microsoft, said in an address at the Data Center World conference in Las Vegas last week that the Chicago data center would be the first one that Microsoft has built using containers.

There are a number of reasons why shipping containers can make good data centers. Among them are the facts that the containers are cheap, mobile, stackable, water-proof, and can be cooled using their own walls. Another big reason why they make sense is that the power densities of the computing gear can be several times higher than that which is available in a traditional brick and mortar data center. That means a data center can be smaller, which is an important feature in urban areas. Microsoft has not said if it is designing its own containerized data centers or working with Sun Microsystems, Rackable Systems, or Verari Systems, which all offer container data centers.

Microsoft seems intent on using data center scale and price/performance as weapons against Google and, if need be, Yahoo. And Microsoft has the cash to experiment and see if this idea merits investment by other corporations. Don't be surprised to see a storage container with a Windows Server logo near you some day.

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