Microsoft Mulling Portable Data Centers 137
1sockchuck writes "An architect of the Windows Live team has published a presentation advocating portable container-based data centers as the future of data center infrastructure. James Hamilton, who previously was GM of Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, contends that a distributed network of unmanned modular units 'transforms data centers from static and costly behemoths into inexpensive and portable lightweights. ... Multiple smaller data centers, regionally located, could prove to be a competitive advantage.' Both Sun and Rackable have rolled out prototypes of container-based 'data center in a box' products, and Hamilton notes that large generators are also available in trailers."
*snore* (Score:4, Informative)
As usual, the "visionaries" at MS simply feed us what others have invented as their great ideas.
Re:It's one thing... (Score:3, Informative)
Dupe (Score:3, Informative)
Sun To Unveil Project Blackbox [slashdot.org] Oct 17, '06
Yes, they are about Google and Sun, but does "OMG Micro$oft is doing it too!!!!1111" count as news?
Re:What about maintenance and fixes? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the documentation lead for a server [sun.com] with a LOM [sun.com] that's very fancy indeed. There's a graphic terminal service that supports things like interacting with the BIOS, or logging into the server's GUI. There's a LOM command line you can access using a serial connection or over SSH. The LOM also supports IPMI [wikipedia.org], which is kind of a basic necessity when you have a lot of servers, even if they're all down the hall.
This server is certified for Windows 2003 (and I understand a lot of our customers buy it for that fell purpose), so it would be ideal for Microsoft's container. However, we have a our own competing container product [sun.com].
And yes, the company I work for is Sun, and yes, we're selling Windows-based systems now. Shocking, isn't it?
Rackables is crap (Score:4, Informative)
The number of servers per rack is constrained by electricity. For a while we couldn't figure out how they fit 48 servers into the same amount of electricity that our current server vendor used to power 24 + 1 switch. That is until we pulled a server apart and saw that they are using LAPTOP CPUS. The servers don't perform nearly on par with normal ones. They were, and are, selling snake oil.