capacity planning

Microsoft rolls out container data center strategy for cloud computing

Say goodbye to chillers and CRAC-units, say goodbye to raised floors and traditional disaster recovery. And say hello to the new paradigm, courtesy of Microsoft’s data center team.

Microsoft’s goal in 2008 was to shake up the data center community in a big way, starting with Mike Manos’ announcement at AFCOM that Microsoft would be deploying containerized data centers, to Christian Belady’s “Data center in a tent” experiment with a PUE of 1.0. Mission accomplished.

These guys are pushing the envelope like no one else in the industry — rabble rousing at ASHRAE TC 9.9 meetings, calling out vendors, and blogging about it every chance they get. They’re literally scaring people who have built their reputation and businesses on traditional data center design — and I don’t just mean the people selling chillers and raised flooring. These engineers are mad scientists, flipping their noses at decades of conventional wisdom.

You can read Microsoft’s proposal for yourself at Mike Manos’ blog, but the basic concept is this: data center trailers with minimal building envelop, using unconditioned outside air to cool servers. The servers will run on outside air with temperatures ranging 10-35 C and 20-80% relative humidity. “For this class of infrastructure, we eliminate generators, chillers, UPSs,” Belady wrote in the blog.

Here is a video:

Video: Microsoft Generation 4.0 Data Center Vision

The applications these servers are supporting have a built-in failover, Microsoft calls it “geo-redundancy”. If the server (or servers) die, the application automatically shifts over to another batch of servers, and Microsoft technicians replace the servers on a maintenance schedule.

For applications that demand higher redundancies, Microsoft will build more robust infrastructure. But thanks to its chargeback program, Microsoft’s business units will be less likely to adopt the more expensive higher-redundancy configurations if they can prove the bare bones approach works.

Microsoft doesn’t want you to put your data center in a tent. If you want to run big iron, have redundant components, pay big bucks for people to babysit your servers and keep them cool, that’s your business.

But they do want you to know that they plan to run all of their data centers at 1.125 PUE by 2012.

Liebert, Aperture, Future Facilities pen deal

Data center cooling giant Liebert (part of Emerson Network Power) is teaming up with Aperture and Future Facilities in a push to be the leader in data center prototyping and analysis.

The companies are not merging, but have penned a deal to combine their forces in a push to become the leader in data center prototyping and design. The biggest part of the deal is probably the integration of Future Facilities’ 6SigmaDC computational fluid dynamics software with Aperture’s Vista software. It will allow the CFD airflow analyses done by Future Facilities to take advantage of the large inventory database of IT equipment that Aperture has.

Liebert is still a big part of the deal, however, as its base of customers is larger than either of the other two companies by far.

The full press release spells out a few more details. The companies announced the deal in the midst of AFCOM’s Data Center World conference in Orlando. Check out all of our Data Center World coverage.

HP’s POD data center container selling point is the supply chain

The HP Performance Optimized Data Center (POD) is essentially a me-too product, following on the heels of Sun’s Project Black Box and Rackable’s ICE cube. But a recent post from Gordon Haff at Illuminata about the HP POD containerized data center makes a good case for HP’s offering. Haff brought up a great point I hadn’t seen in other coverage of the new Hewlett-Packard data center trailer thus far.

Haff says HP’s strengths are in volume server design and supply chain, “And that’s the reason HP is likely to be as successful with this type of product as anyone—if not more than most… It’s the IT gear within the container, how it’s delivered, how it’s serviced, and how it’s upgraded that matter most to potential customers.”

In recent articles, HP execs have positioned the POD as a way for companies running out of data center space to add capacity quickly, reducing the time it takes to build out brick-and-mortar space.

If data center managers are looking for on-demand capacity, then a company like Sun might not be the best option. While the Sun Modular Data Center has all the engineering bells and whistles of the HP POD, can you afford to rely on a company that’s had serious hardware supply chain issues when you’re in a capacity crunch?

Oregon state data center consolidation blasted by auditors

Oregon is facing a data center crisis. A recent audit found that the state botched a $63.6 million state data center consolidation. While the auditors turned up several flaws — the biggest one seems to be that the new facility is already running out of room!

According to a recent Oregonian article: Officials confirmed Friday that part of the state’s data center operation — including 43 employees — has spilled over into a separate building in Salem. One agency, the Department of Consumer and Business Services, pulled out of the new 45,000-square-foot center because of insufficient power supply. Another, the Department of Education, has refused to locate its network there because of security concerns.

The project has been in the works for three years and has had five project directors since its inception. Scott Harra, director of the Department of Administrative Services inherited this nightmare and his staff is trying to consolidate servers to gain capacity. But this step is coming way too late.

Why would you plan a data center consolidation without consolidating the servers? “Instead of consolidating operations, agency servers and other computing equipment were simply picked up and moved to a new place,” The Oregonian reported.

How do you plan capacity and build a data center without looking at your server and application needs first? Why did they put all those legacy servers on a truck and plop them down in a new room instead of porting those applications to higher efficiency, virtualized machines?

And it’s not as if the planners didn’t have a clue. According to the Oregon State Data Center Website, ComputerSite Engineering reviewed the design documents and awarded the Uptime Institute’s Tier III availability standard to the initial project. The facility also applied for the US Green Building Council’s LEED rating. These folks had an ambitious plan that went awry.

According to a source near the project that asked not to be identified, the various state agencies did not want to relinquish control to a centralized project manager, but that control had to be relinquished to make the new site work. It may be that the agencies did agree to move in, but did not do any of the consolidation work normally done in conjunction with a new site. I don’t claim to understand the Byzantine inner workings of state government, but if you could shed some insight into how this might have happened (or how it could have been avoided) please leave a comment. It’s literally my tax dollars at waste.