Container-based data centers: One size fits all?
Since the announcement by Microsoft at AFCOM that they would be using containers like Rackable’s Ice Cube in their new data centers, much attention has been focused on the container-based set-up. Sun led the way with their Blackbox, and now Dell is releasing their own containerized data center.
But not everyone in the world of data centers think that these boxes are the cat’s meow. I asked Pete Sacco, President of PTS Data Center Solutions, Inc. for his thoughts. He referred me to his blog post on the topic, “Reflections on the Data Center in a Box”, and shared some additional comments:
Many data center-in-a-box providers only offer a homogenous data processing environment, which for most users won’t fly. Even those that are equipment neutral are available but have not sold well (e.g., APC’s Data Center on Wheels). The facility limitation of a data center-in-a-box hamper their adaptation. Access to sufficient power and chilled water (a heat rejection source) has always been, and will remain a primary cost driver of data center development. Therefore, the savings are not as dramatic as portrayed. Besides, due to form-factor and other attributes they are a lower availability solution than a traditional brick-and-mortar data center. In my opinion, their use will be limited to large enterprise and fringe applications at best.
Sacco succinctly points out the criticisms that were levied at Microsoft’s adoption of the concept in Computer World’s article. But beyond Sacco’s points about cost and flexibility, the CW article also picked at specific design flaws that some interviewees perceived existed. These were responded to in a thorough post from Mike Manos.
With Dell jumping into the pool with Sun, Rackable, and Verari, and IBM planning a container using it’s iDataPlex server, one must ask the question: Are all these companies making the right move? Competition is key to a market economy, but is market saturation going to occur? If the uptake on containerized systems isn’t going to be widespread, are these companies taking too big a risk in developing their own container systems?
Ron Hughes, President of California Data Center Design Group pointed out that the container approach is in fact, nothing new:
They’ve been making these for at least 10 years. Like everything else, they have their place. In the right setting, for the right client, they can be very useful and they work very well. We typically see them as either a short term solution until a data center can be built, or as a permanent solution if building a data center is not an option. The upside is speed to market, potentially energy efficiency and portability. The downside is cost and capacity.
I’m not convinced that it will be a widespread solution due to the high cost and limited server capacity. The solutions also vary as to whether they require separate infrastructure support systems or not. I haven’t seen any cost comparison to a standard data center, but for a medium to large application, I doubt that it is cost competitive. It will be interesting to see how these play out long term.
For an end-user company like Microsoft that is in need of large amounts of servers, the plug-and-play and interchangeability of the containers is attractive. But for other data centers, this solution may cost too much or be too large for their limited needs.
What do you think? Are containers here to stay — are we looking at the future of data center technology? Or is it just one tool in the toolbox?
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Upon hearing that the Google data center in The Dalles, Ore. will take up as much electricity as Tacoma, Wash., a colleague of mine said: “I’ve been to Tacoma, Google’s a better use for it.”