Photo Tour: A Container Data Center

What does a container data center look like? We have additional photos of Microsoft’s new data center in Chicago, which is optimized for 40-foot data center containers holding thousands of servers each. Check out our photo tour of the new facility, which provides additional views of the “container canyon” and the high-density server configurations inside the containers, plus a link to video of a container being installed.

NAVIGATION

• Inside Microsoft’s Chicago Data Center
• Center-Aisle Container
• Side-Aisle Container
• Power and Cooling Infrastructure
• Microsoft Chicago: The Road Ahead

Microsoft Unveils Its Container-Powered Cloud

A look at one of the double-decker data center containers housed at the massive new Microsoft data center near Chicago. The facility includes both raised-floor space and plug-n-play bays for containers packed with servers.

As the bay door opens at Microsoft’s enormous new Chicago data center, the future backs in on a trailer. Forty-foot long containers packed with servers are unloaded with winches, and stacked two-high onto “air skates” that float on compressed air. Using the air skates, as few as four employees can move the 60-ton stack into place in Microsoft’s “container canyon” in the lower floor of the facility in Northlake, Ill.

Within eight hours, the new container is fully installed, hooked up to chilled water, power and a network connection. “These hold 2,000 servers each, and they can be deployed in hours,” said Kevin Timmons, Microsoft’s general manager for data center operations. “That’s an awesome, awesome thing.”

$500 Million Investment
Microsoft opened the doors of its $500 million Chicago facility today, providing media and local officials with a look inside the 700,000 square foot data center. The tour showcased a container-driven design that Microsoft expects to deliver huge benefits in cost, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. (See our photo tour for a closer look at the new facility).

The new data center, which began operations on July 20, is an unusual hybrid of what Microsoft views as the present and future of data center design, separated by a staircase.

The lower level is a vast space with a high ceiling and diagonal parking spaces for the 40-foot container stacks. Twelve containers are already installed, including 10 double-stacked versions with servers on the bottom and cooling infrastructure above, and two single-story containers.

The first phase can hold up to 56 containers, and a second phase (currently shell space) offers identical capacity. That gives the Chicago facility a total capacity of 112 containers holding 224,000 servers.

Gallery: Microsoft’s Dublin Data Center

The exterior of the new energy-efficient Microsoft data center in Dublin, Ireland.

Microsoft’s new data center in Dublin will power much of the company’s global cloud computing operation, while using far less energy and water than typically consumed in other data centers of this scale. We’ve put together a photo gallery offers a closer look at the design innovations driving its efficiency, including photos of the server room and data center interior and a diagram of the free cooling system. See our photo feature, Inside Microsoft’s Dublin Mega Data Center.

Microsoft’s Chiller-less Data Center

An aerial view showing rooftop air handlers at Microsoft's Dublin data center, which opens today. (Image: Microsoft Corp.)

Microsoft has joined Google on the new frontier of energy efficiency – the chiller-less data center. Microsoft today announced that its huge facility in Dublin, Ireland is running without any chillers. Outside air is drawn into the facility to cool the thousands of servers powering the company’s “Live” suite of online services for users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Microsoft also said it can run its server rooms at temperatures of up to 95 degrees F (35 degrees Celsius), much warmer than most data centers, which typically range between 68 and 72 degrees. 

Free Cooling Drives Energy Savings
Using outside air in data center air conditioning – a practice known as “free cooling” or air-side economization – allows facility owners to dramatically reduce the amount of energy used in cooling. Chillers, which are used to refrigerate water, are widely used in data center cooling systems but require a large amount of electricity to operate.

With the growing focus on power costs, many data centers are reducing their reliance on chillers to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities. Running servers at higher temperatures greatly expands a company’s ability to use free cooling instead of chillers.

In July we noted that Google has begun operating a chiller-less data center in Belgium. Microsoft says the cool climate in Ireland allowed it to also implement a design that eliminates chillers completely.

Tech Hermit Blog Returns

Back in July I noted the passing of Shane McGew, who wrote about the data center industry at his Tech Hermit blog. So I was surprised to find new posts at the Tech Hermit blog this week.

Here’s the story: “Today we are announcing that through detailed negotiations with the McGew family a group of avid readers have purchased the rights to the Tech Hermit brand and will continue to post under this heading and keep the same edgy feedback that we came to love with Shane. We hope to earn the same level of trust and respect in time.”

Shane was always pretty plugged into goings-on in data center operations at Microsoft, a trend that continues with the new team (whose members remain anonymous). A post today notes the departure of another Microsoft data center executive, Joel Stone, who is headed to Global Switch. Stone’s departure follows the exit of Global Foundation Services corporate VP Debra Chrapaty, who is off to Cisco.

Microsoft’s Chrapaty Heads to Cisco

The job shuffling among top data center executives continued this week with news that Microsoft’s Debra Chrapaty is heading to Cisco Systems (CSCO). Chrapaty was the corporate VP of Global Foundation Services, the Microsoft business unit responsible for building and operating the company’s data centers and Edge Content Network. Kara Swisher at Boomtown reports that Chrapaty will run the software collaboration group at Cisco. That group’s previous head, Doug Dennerline, recently jumped to Salesforce.com.

Where else could Chrapaty’s experience come in handy? Cisco is building a $184 million data center in Allen, Texas and is also rumored to be working on a content delivery network.

Here’s a quick recap of this year’s musical chairs involving leading data center executives:

• Michael Manos moves from Microsoft to Digital Realty Trust.
• Kevin Timmons shifted from Yahoo to Microsoft.
• Olivier Sanche left eBay to run Apple’s data centers.
• Dean Nelson moves from Sun Microsystems to run eBay’s data centers.

Microsoft Data Center Battles Server Hugging

Microsoft has provided a look inside a new data center facility in Redmond, Washington where it is consolidating servers for its research unit and labs. The company says the consolidation, which physically separates Microsoft engineers from the servers running their test code, enables an important shift to remote computing. After all, if Microsoft expects its customers to run their apps remotely in the cloud, shouldn’t its employees do the same?

Microsoft says remote server management requires an internal culture shift. The need to be near one’s servers – a tendency known as “server hugging” – is deeply rooted and can play a large role in a company’s decisions on outsourcing and data center site location.

The 50,000 square foot Redmond Ridge 1 data center is about eight miles from Microsoft’s headquarters campous in Redmond. The facility is considerably smaller than the massive data centers the company has built to support its online services operation, but will still be able to house 35,000 to 50,000 servers. The new facility is helping Microsoft save energy by consolidating servers from a bevy of server rooms in office buildings and centralizing them in a dedicated building designed for energy efficiency.

Roundup: DataPipe, Peak 10, Equinix, APC

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• DataPipe rolls out 3PAR services. Utility storage provider 3PAR announced Monday that Cloud-Agile partner DataPipe now offers differentiated virtual private array (VPA) and disaster recovery (DR) services as a part of their Stratosphere cloud services, which are powered by 3PAR Utility Storage.  DataPipe’s cloud platform leverages VMware and 3PAR to offer a managed, secure virtualized service. “We now have the opportunity to expand our cloud service offerings in the areas of security and compliance to increase the value we offer our customers,” said Michael Parks, Chief Technology Officer for DataPipe.  The 3PAR ASSURED product allows DataPipe to use remote copy, data replication, DR and automatic data backup to end users.  The 3PAR SECURED product offers isolated, secure virtual private array servies.
• Peak 10 deploys VMware vSphere 4.  Data center operator Peak 10 announced the delivery of Private Cloud Infrastructure Solutions, via VMware’s vSphere 4 platform.  The platform offers customers pools of virtualized resources that federate between on and off-premise environments on-demand and with ease.  By using vSphere 4 Peak 10 customers can maintain the integrity of their data and applications, while migrating to the cloud platform.  Peak 10’s leadership team are in San Francisco this week attending the VMworld 2009 conference.  Enhancements allowed from Peak 10’s vSphere 4 platform include twice as many virtual processors per virtual machine, four times the memory, three-times increase in network throughput, and additional SAN tiers available for high-end databases.

NY Times on Google vs. Microsoft

As we’ve often noted here at DCK, data centers are the front line on many business battles of the Internet age, including the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Ashlee Vance at The New York Times examines how the two companies approach their data center operations this morning on the Bits blog, noting Microsoft’s roof-less Generation 4 design and the company’s recent decision to migrate its Windows Azure operations out of Washington State for tax reasons.