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Video Demo of Microsoft's "Containerized" Data Storage

Posted by timothy on Thu May 01, 2008 03:22 PM
from the trailer-parks-have-always-been-ahead-of-their-time dept.
Data Storage Microsoft Businesses IT
BDPrime writes "Michael Manos, Microsoft's director of data center services, shows a 3-D rendering of the company's upcoming containerized data center, which is like a facility full of shipping containers. He also demos Scry, Microsoft's internal data center analytics tool that lets the company monitor the data center's energy use, carbon footprint and power bill. There are a few companies out there that are now touting the data center in a shipping container. Sun was one of the first with its Blackbox, now called the Sun MD, while others include Rackable Systems' ICE Cube and Verari's FOREST."
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Submission: Video of Microsoft's "containerized" data by BDPrime (1012761)
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Video Demo of Microsoft's "Containerized" Data Storage 50 Comments More /

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  • I heard they are hermetically sealed to keep all the viruses inside.
  • Microsoft's new storage solution was put to good use [treehugger.com].
  • Too bad all these companies are making millions off the forethought of Brewster. They should each donate 1 shipping container to the Internet Archive.
  • So he runs around Redmond wearing a black cape with red hands on them?
  • Drop a data center in one of these babies [pods.com] and you have yourself a real iPOD!
  • When is Ortega gonna show up?
  • The Key word is : "upcoming" :-)

  • Still asking, who's gonna use that? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Thursday May 01 2008, @03:42PM (#23267892)
    If data storage is about anything, it's trust. Now, who trusts MS? A company that has shown time and again that their primary concern is their shareholders, not their customers. A company that has shown time and again that their software cannot be trusted, neither on the technical nor on the personal level. And this company should handle my important data?

    Care to tell me why?
    • This is a very important question. With the Whitehouse blaming MS Exchange for the loss of emails (at least in part so no need for flames as that is how joe sixpack will hear the news), the NSA backdoor through security, the high number of vulnerabilities, refusal to use ODF, closed source code, and any number of questionable business practices, it is quite likely that governments as well as big business will begin to question the wisdom of choosing MS to handle their data. This is doubly true if any F/OSS
      • With the Whitehouse blaming MS Exchange for the loss of emails (at least in part so no need for flames as that is how joe sixpack will hear the news),

        I will note though that joe sixpack doesn't even know what a data center is, much less needs one, designs one or does comparisons of various vendor solutions. So your argument doesn't really apply. If the designer of a data center is ignorant enough to miss the technical issues with the above-mentioned White House press release, and incompetent enough to us
    • By this metric, no one would buy any storage product from any vendor.
      • It's a matter of trust. There are companies I do trust (to some extent), and others I don't. Mostly because of former experience.

        Now, what do people think of when they think of MS? Rock-solid systems? Perfect support? Reliable announcements? Neither of the three, quite far from it. We're used to MS crashing (even people who are anything but geeks can identify a BSOD, it's not just something you may sometimes get to see when you are a driver developer), support personnell that can't even tell me the differen
    • Shareholders?

      ok ok, just kidding
      • No, a valid point. Shareholders do put trust in MS, for the same reason they put a lot of trust into IBM in the 60s to 80s: It is a rock solid investment. Like it or hate it, but you simply cannot escape it if you need computers.

        But here's the problem in this case: Shareholders don't buy MS products, they pump money into MS because they know MS products sell. And thus they won't use that storage system, or at least if they do, they do it as customers, not shareholders.
    • The containers in the Chicago data center will be used to support Office Live. Since they're buying 220 of them, they must figure Office Live is gonna get some use.
    • Not that I disagree with your point - but can you name a single company that puts their customers interests over those of its shareholders?
    • You answered your own question: the shareholders trust Microsoft. Fix that and MS will improve.

    • A company that has shown time and again that their primary concern is their shareholders, not their customers.

      As a publicly-held company this is pretty much a legal requirement. Companies are allowed to ignore their customers, even for extended periods of time; they're not allowed to ignore their shareholders for any significant measure of time.

      Now, generally, shareholders want happy customers or they don't achieve growth. No growth means loss of revenue, so to say that shareholder's interests are opposed to customer interests is a very short-term view of a company that has a few decades behind it.

      So if you'r

  • hardware: $1m

    Microsoft software licenses: $10m

    the feeling you get living inside the container to keep rebooting machines after BSsOD: priceless
  • "Scry"? How are you supposed to read that? It almost looks like 'scary' to me. That is not a good name to have when it comes to MS and data storage... I do not want my data storage to be 'scary'!
    • I believe it is supposed to be read as scry [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by stubear (130454)
      "English mother fucker. Do you speak it?!?!?"

      scry |skr|
      verb ( skries, skried) [ intrans. ]
      foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface.

      Can you put 2+2 together on your own now or do you need more help?
    • Sounds like someone needs to buy a vowel

  • Saw these at a recent military based symposium in Redmond. It is an incredible idea. Picture a scenario where you need a self powered IT infrastructure immediately. Bring these in and you have everything a disaster area/forward operating base/remote research facility would need for connectivity and information.

    Governments, universities, militaries, NGO's could all use them.

    Can be shipped by air, over the road, rail road, and sea.

    You want your Marines/rescuers/construction team on-site now with a full com

    • This may qualify as an incredible idea, but it definitely does not qualify as MicroSoft's incredible idea.

      More of a "we can do that too" type of thing.
    • Bring these in and you have everything a disaster area/forward operating base/remote research facility would need for connectivity and information.

      Yeah, except for the massive power demands of an entire data center. You can't just plug the thing into a wall socket. Requires external cooling, too.

      They're cool and all if you need to rapidly increase your capacity, especially if on a temporary basis, but when starting from zero, once you've built the infrastructure necessary to power/cool one of these, you m
      • Power is generally not a huge issue, as containerized generators are fairly standardized and rapidly deployable. Cooling on the other hand is where most of these solutions fail. A large air cooled generator can be shipped in on skids, but will usually require an external pump skid to get things operational.

        The problem with integrating cooling solutions is that it is too climate dependent to standardize. Tightly managed direct evaporative coolers can make a solid solution until you get to very hot, humid
        • Portable Chillers, including pumps, on a tractor-trailer are fairly easy to obtain (but expensive). I've seen plenty of these running in downtown Chicago during the big basement flood (when a contractor punched a hole in a tunnel running under the Chicago river, and flooded out hundreds of high-rise basements, shorting out lots of electrical services and submerging many cooling plants)
          75 F wet bulb is fairly common in Chicago, (designing for 78 F wet bulb is not unusual here for sizing evaporative cooling
  • I see that Rackable Systems has finally developed a product that acts in a major television show, produces hip hop albums, and saves the world by talking to a high tech dolphin in one fell swoop. Brilliant!
  • worry about someone with one of these. [wikimedia.org]
  • A shipping container of Microsoft stuff. That's quite a bit more than I want!
  • The Virtual Earth team is an early adopter of the Microsoft containers, and has posted pictures [datacenterknowledge.com] of what they look like on the inside. Note that they're using customized Forest containers [verari.com] from Verari Systems rather than Rackable or Sun (at least at this point).
  • There are also videos available showing tours of the Rackable ICE Cube [datacenterknowledge.com] 40-foot container and Sun's Project Blackbox [youtube.com] (now renamed to the immensely more boring Sun MD) in a 20-foot container.
  • ...a hardware solution even Windows Vista can't slow down.
  • If you offshore your workers, putting your data into shipping containers is the next logical step.
  • Second container on the left contains the Ark of the Covenant!
    • There are a few companies out there that are now touting the data center in a shipping container. Sun was one of the first with its Blackbox, now called the Sun MD, while others include Rackable Systems' ICE Cube and Verari's FOREST

      No, they weren't the first.

      Oh you meant you. Ok then. I guess you innovated that comment!
    • Why is it that the only thing I can think of when I read about this story is Ballmer doing his version of Dick in a Box?
    • wow, and your's qualifies as all three... troll, off-topic, and flame, with the added benefit of juvenile name calling.

      Bravo!
    • Data center in a shipping container is hardly an original idea. Its one of those things that everybody thinks of on their own at some point. Not to mention the fact that just about every single spy movie ever made has got some scaled down version of one lodged into the back of a van at some point.

      But thanks for the well thought out comment!
        • I know that sun was the first to bring it to market (I remember drooling over the pictures of it when it came out). My point was that to say that Microsoft somehow "stole" this idea is a little ignorant considering how obvious it is.
          The demand has been there for a long time (mostly from the military), the fact that Sun was the first company to ship one is irrelevant.
        • Sun didn't invent anything either, there were all kinds of people who came up with the "gee, let's containerize computing components", including the military. Your irrational, asshaterific hatred for Microsoft is boring me. Most of the shit you dweebs hold dear, like Linux, isn't original by any stretch of the imagination. The business world isn't about ideas, it's about execution.
        • So you're a Mac user, huh? You might want to look into a Windowing System known as "KDE", and then possibly something called "BSD", maybe even "RSYNC", or "THE NOKIA 770" before you start pointing fingers at anyone for buying/stealing ideas.
            • The point is that in any industry (and in the technology especially) ideas get passed around, bought, stolen, exchanged, traded, collaborated on etc. all the time. You point the finger at Microsoft for shipping a Data center in a Shipping Container because sun brought it to market first. Well, incremental backups have been around for YEARS before mac came along and started shipping software that does it and claiming it as their own, same thing with the "Dock" it existed in KDE wayyy before they did it in

    • Watch that and _then_ post and tell me what you think of it!

      Sure... -1 Offtopic

      Now, I am willing to change my opinion, provided you completely answer my following two questions.

      1. What are your educational qualifications. Please list all relevant college degrees as well as the name of the institution which granted them to you. Feel free to list any papers you published on this topic.

      2. Please tell me what this has to do with MS demoing a datacenter in a shipping container, and why I should give a shit o

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