CRG West has expanded its initiative to host data center containers, announcing this week that it streamline deployment of Verari Systems' FOREST containers in its data centers. CRG West, which recently announced a similar agreement to support the HP POD container, appears to be the only wholesale data center provider pursuing the container market with enthusiasm.
By providing plug-n-play infrastructure and security for containers, CRG West hopes to tap a market for companies that are interested in using containers for rapid expansion, but have run out of power or cooling capacity needed to install containers at their existing data centers.
“Traditional brick-and-mortar data centers are becoming an increasingly less optimal solution for many enterprise customers because of the rising costs associated with building and powering them,” said Mark MacAuley, vice president of Strategic Accounts, CRG West.
CRG West data centers in Boston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area now have the ability to monitor, power, and secure Verari FOREST Containers. Verari’s 40-foot shipping containers can house more than 2,000 of the company's BladeRack 2X-Series series, or up to 13 petabytes of storage capacity.
“The Verari FOREST Container solution allows enterprises to maximize flexibility while cutting costs exponentially and boosting performance to new levels,” said Dan Gatti, senior vice president of Worldwide Market Operations, Verari Systems. “When combined with CRG West’s nationwide, ready to deploy data center capabilities, the results are immediate and the savings are significant.”
While CRG West is embracing the potential of container hosting, two other large providers of wholesale data center space remain skeptical. At Tuesday's Tier1 Datacenter Transformation Summit, representatives of Digital Realty Trust (DLR) and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) each expressed reservations about the container model.
Digital Realty senior vice president Chris Crosby called the containers "the industry's red herring," saying they make sense for companies building large customized server farms (i.e. Google and Microsoft) but are less practical for enterprise customers. Hossein Fateh, the president and CEO of DuPont Fabros, challenged claims that containers are more economical than "bricks and mortar" data centers.
For more on the pros and cons of containers, check out the Great Debate on Data Center Containers, an in-depth conversation between teams of data center professionals on both sides of the issue.
