Inside a Microsoft data center

Containerized data centers

Sun pioneered containerized data centers with their 2006 water-cooled Project Blackbox. But the Microsoft model is air-cooled and in production today in Boulder, CO.

Here’s the exterior:

Photo courtesy of the Microsoft Virtual Earth Gov Blog

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Photo courtesy of Verari Systems

They also build high density storage and servers with very efficient cooling. They get 24 3.5″ disks and up to 4 quad-core processors into 3 rack units - where most rackmount systems require 4U with half the cores.

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It’s what’s inside that computes
Putting ~3400 disk drives and 1700 cores into 320 sq. ft. isn’t easy, which is what makes this picture so interesting:

Photo courtesy of the Microsoft Virtual Earth Gov Blog

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Here’s their high-density storage blade:

Photo courtesy of Verari Systems

The Storage Bits take
While I was skeptical at first, I’m now convinced that containerized data centers are the most economical and energy efficient alternative. Microsoft even bought wind-generated power for these units to underscore the point.

With the rapid growth of computing and data for science, commerce and entertainment we need to do it as efficiently as possible.

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