More on IBM’s Research Triangle Project

IBM has posted a video with an overview of its plans to build a $360 million cloud computing data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The new facility will be feature 60,000 square feet of raised-floor space. This video runs about 1 minute and 40 seconds

For more news from Big Blue, visit our IBM channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

IBM Plans $360M Cloud Data Center in NC

IBM will build a $360 million data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to power cloud computing applications for customers, the company announced today. The new facility will incorporate IBM’s latest approaches to energy-efficiency, modular design and high-density computing.

While Amazon, Microsoft and Google build their own cloud platforms, IBM is focused on building cloud data centers in which its enterprise customers can run their own applications. The Research Triangle Park (RTP) facility will provide up to 60,000 square feet of raised floor space that can be customized for IBM customers. The project is part of a broader cloud computing initiative unveiled today by IBM, which also includes a new cloud computing center in Tokyo.

IBM will renovate an existing warehouse building on its RTP campus for the new data center, which will be the first in the world to be built with IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center design principles. This approach provides internet-scale computing capabilities, including power densities of up to 1,600 watts per square foot, along with IBM’s latest energy efficiency designs.

“We’ve got a fairly creative way we’re going to design this data center to maximize our energy usage,” said Joseph Dzaluk, IBM’s Worldwide Vice President for Infrastructure and Resource Management. “It will be guided by customer requirements, but we’ve designed it to segment different work loads and densities.”

IBM’s Big Green Data Center in Boulder

On June 17 IBM officially opened the expansion of its data center in Boulder, Colorado, which the company says is its “greenest data center in North America.” The 115,000 square-foot expansion includes 70,000 square feet of raised floor space and is part of Big Blue’s $350 million investment in Boulder, which is now IBM’s largest data center in the world at more than 300,000 square feet. This video from the opening event features a look inside the data center and commentary from IBM officials and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter. This video runs about 2 minutes.

For more news from Big Blue, visit our IBM channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

IBM: Containers Will Provide Instant Capacity

When it introduced its Project Blackbox container, Sun Microsystems offered images of potential scenarios for the deployment of its “data center in a box,” including a Blackbox on Mars or sitting at the base of a huge wind turbine. At the time, it was fair to wonder whether the data center in a shipping container was a game-changer or a niche product.

Soon Sun wasn’t alone, as Rackable, Verari and Dell developed containers, and Microsoft announced it would fill a data center with them. Pretty soon 2008 began to shape up as a breakthrough year for containers. But what about IBM?

“We’ve spent the last two years looking at the container market and determining when we wanted to enter,” said Jody Cefola, Marketing Manager for IBM’s Site and Facilities Services. “We see two major uses: temporary data center capacity, and deploying compute capacity in remote locations.”

IBM Opens Green Data Center in Boulder

IBM today officially opened a major expansion of its data center in Boulder, Colorado, which the company is calling its “greenest data center in North America.” The 115,000 square-foot expansion includes 70,000 square feet of raised floor space and is part of Big Blue’s $350 million investment in Boulder, which is now IBM’s largest data center in the world at more than 300,000 square feet.

The new data center features many technologies developed as part of IBM’s Big Green energy efficiency program. These include:

• The center is partially powered by alternative energy sources, with more than 1 million kilowatt hours per year of wind-powered electricity being purchased, resulting in a planned reduction of approximately two million pounds of carbon dioxide produced per year.
• Both air- and water-cooling technologies are supported.
• The facility can switch to free or pre-cooling, using a water economizer to reduce energy consumption nine months out of the year.
• The Boulder site uses variable-speed pumps and motors installed in cooling systems to balance capacity to actual load, further reducing energy usage and costs.

IBM, Con Edison Team On Energy Efficiency

IBM will team with Con Edison to encourage data center operators to reduce their energy consumption, the two companies said today. IBM said the relationship will be the first step in a broader effort to work with utility companies on energy efficiency initiatives.

Con Edison, the utility serving New York City, will work with IBM to promote awareness of energy efficiency among its customers, including IBM carbon audits and a related program to help companies earn energy efficiency certificates that can be converted into cash. IBM also said it had extended its energy audit program beyond the data center, offering customers the ability to assess their energy efficiency in their office space and branch locations. The partnership was announced at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Toronto, which began yesterday.

Video of IBM’s New Modular Data Centers

IBM has released a video overview of its new “data center family” of modular data center building blocks, which includes a 5,000-square-foot module for enterprise customers, and data center container products in both 20-foot and 40-foot shipping containers. This clip runs about 2 minutes, and provides footage of the containers, including a brief glimpse of the interior design.

For more about IBM and its modular data centers, see our IBM Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

A Look at IBM’s Data Center Container

Here’s a look at the Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC), IBM’s new modular data center housed in a shipping container. The unit pictured here is a demo unit in Barcelona, Spain housed in a 20-foot shipping container. IBM is also offering a 40-foot version of the container data center. IBM joins a growing group of hardware vendors offering container solutions, including Sun Microsystems (JAVAD), Rackable (RACK) and Verari Systems. Dell and HP are also rumored to be developing containers, while the “data center in a box” concept has been embraced by Microsoft, which plans to pack at least 150 40-foot containers into the first floor of its new Chicago data center.

IBM today announced a family of new data center designs for modular “form factors,” including a 5,000-square-foot module for enterprise customers, data center container products in both 20-foot and 40-foot shipping containers, and a 200-square-foot module that allows users to quickly create a high-density zone within a low-density data center.