Cisco Containers Target Federal Market

The data center container housing the NASA Nebula cloud computing application arrives at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

It’s no surprise that Cisco Systems has confirmed that it is officially developing a data center container offering. In reality, Cisco (CSCO) has been busy in the container market for some time, most visibly in procuring a container for the Nebula cloud computing project at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The Nebula “data center in a box” was built inside a FOREST container from Verari Systems filled with Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System (UCS).

Now Cisco is packaging a UCS-packed container as a product, with the U.S. government as its anchor customer. “We’re looking at a model of building a Cisco container – with a Cisco part number – that will contain the unified computing platform,” said Bruce Klein, Cisco’s U.S. public sector senior VP. 

InformationWeek reported that Cisco had orders for 150 containers for the U.S. military.

Given its experience with the Nebula container, Cisco may also be shaping up as a beneficiary of NASA”s decision to revamp its $1.5 billion data center road map, apparently to include a larger cloud computing component.

Cisco’s container offering is described in a brochure on a portion of its web site dedicated to government solutions. The company says the containers can be deployed in 12 to 16 weeks and operated with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.05 to 1.25. The enclosure can contain either Cisco gear or third-party equipment.

VMware Rolls Out Mobile Data Center

The VMware Express, a data center on wheels that will offer demos of virtualization technology.

VMware is going on the road to showcase its virtualization technology. And it’s bringing all its equipment with it in a rolling mobile data center packed with gear from Cisco Systems, NetApp, Dell Xsigo and parent EMC Corp.The VMware Express is making its debut at this week’s VMware Partner Exchange Event. The Express will be crossing the U.S. and Canada to bring VMware demos to customers, but the exact schedule of apeparances hasn’t yet been worked out.

HP Offers 20-Foot Version of POD Container

The new 20-foot version of the HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) container.

HP has rolled out a 20-foot Performance-Optimized Datacenter (POD), offering a smaller version of the 40-foot container it introduced in 2008. The new offering offers a lower price point for companies that need mobile computing or expansion space, but may not require a full container of IT equipment.

With the smaller form factor, HP also matches the container options from Rackable, Verari and IBM, which all offer the choice between a 20-foot or 40-foot container. The marketing of the 20-foot unit also reflects a focus on customer choice. The 40-foot POD was painted blue and featured prominent HP logos. The marketing photos of the 20-foot version show  an all-white container with no logos.

The message? HP clearly wants its container to be seen as more than just a sales vessel filled with HP gear. The company has always emphasized that the POD supports servers from any vendor, but appears to be stepping up that message.

The 20-foot POD can hold 10 racks of equipment, and shares many of the design features of its 40-foot kin, including the ability to maintain the cold aisle at temperatures as high as 90 degrees, which is significantly warmer than the 68 to 72 degrees seen in traditional data centers. The POD features taller-than-usual 50U racks to separate and contain the hot and cold aisles.

HP says the POD can operate at a Power Usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.25, and can be delivered in just six weeks. The 20 foot HP POD is available at a starting list price of $600,000 (not including the IT equipment deployed inside), or about half the price of the 40-foot version.

SAVE: Container Server Vault from Firelock

The number of providers offering data center containers continues to grow. Firelock has introduced a  version of its fire-proof “server vault” housed in a 40-foot shipping container, known as the Secure Agile Vault Environment (SAVE) . The product is an adaptation of the company’s room-sized modular fireproof vaults for use in traditional data center facilities. The container includes a fireproof vault in the center area, with a vestibule in front and a mechanical room at the rear. The design features eight server cabinets equipped with rear door heat exchangers from Vette Corporation, supported by a chiller and Vette’s Coolant Distribution unit (CDU), which Firelock says will allow the container to operate with only power and network hookups. This video from Firelock provides additional standards on the SAVE container’s fireproofing and design, and runs about 5 minutes.

For additional information on container offerings, see Inside the Box: Container Video Tours or visit our Data Center Containers Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Container Collaboration by IBM, APC

Attendees at the Gartner Data Center Conference tour the IBM Portable Modular Data center (PMDC) on display on the expo floor at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Power and cooling vendor APC by Schneider Electric today announced an expanded relationship with IBM to offer Big Blue’s Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) container based on APC’s InfraStruxure architecture. The PMDC provides a data center in a shipping container with a complete physical infrastructure including power and cooling systems and remote monitoring.

The announcement builds on the global alliance between APC and IBM announced in 2006 when APC was selected as an infrastructure provider for IBM’s Scalable Modular Data Center (SMDC) and High Density Zone (HDZ) solution, which allows customers to deploy a high density environment rapidly within an existing data center.

APC previously announced a similar partnership with Datapod, an Australian company whose containers include specialized modules which can include “entrypods” that serve as access control man-trap systems or “utilitypods” holding generators and fuel tanks.

Inside The Box: Data Center Container Tours

A view of the container area in the new Microsoft data center in Chicago.

Last week we showcased some of the Coolest Data Center Video Tours. Today we take a look at the latest form factor to gain attention: the “data center in a box” model using shipping containers to house IT equipment. These 20-foot and 40-foot containers aren’t much to look at from the outside. In Inside The Box: Container Video Tours, we reveal the technology inside. Here’s our guide to videos of the leading container offerings developed by vendors and customers, including support containers and some new players featuring flexible designs.

NASA’s Nebula: The Cloud in a Container

The Verari data center container housing the NASA Nebula cloud computing application arrives at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

What do you get when you combine cloud computing and data center containers? You get NASA’s Nebula, the space agency’s new data powerhouse, which provides on-demand computing power for NASA researchers. Nebula was recently cited by federal CIO Vivek Kundra as an example of the government’s ability to “leverage the most innovative technologies.”

The Nebula application lives in a 40-foot container at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The “data center in a box” was built inside a FOREST container from Verari Systems, which is filled with Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System and servers from Silicon Mechanics.

Science Compute Power on Demand
Nebula is a self-service platform built from open source software that provides high capacity computing, storage, and network connectivity for NASA research. “Nebula has been designed to automatically increase the computing power and storage available to science- and data-oriented web applications as demand rises,” explains Chris C. Kemp, Chief Information Officer of NASA Ames Research Center.

“The containerized data center solution from Verari Systems and Cisco delivers the foundation for a next-generation cloud computing environment that is responsive to the needs of our developers so they can focus on mission success – without worrying about the capacity and availability of the computing infrastructure,” said Kemp. “his solution is transforming how we think about NASA’s future computing environment.”

Momentum for Containers
Data center containers allow for rapid expansion of IT infrastructure, and can provide excellent energy efficiency by offering more precise control of airflow within the container. Microsoft and Google have used containers as building blocks in  large data centers, while some enterprises, universities and research ;abs have used containers to add incremental compute capacity.

“Verari is simplifying data center deployment,” says Dan Gatti, senior vice president of Worldwide Market Operations, Verari Systems. “Our customers are able to meet their computing and storage requirements much more quickly and easily than ever before. The planning cycle for a data center has been cut from two years down to 120 days, on average. And our customers are able to recognize huge cost savings in both OpEx and CapEx spend.”

“Cisco and Verari Systems are delivering the data center of the future – today,” said Brad Boston, senior vice president of Cisco Global Government Solutions Group. “As NASA’s Nebula Cloud Computing Environment demonstrates, customers have a great deal of flexibility in how they integrate computing, storage, and networking capabilities with Cisco UCS to ensure a solution designed for mission success today and in the future.”

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra tours the NASA Nebula data center container during a September visit to Ames Research Center.

Bull Debuts Mobull Container for HPC

The Moobull container (left) is a new modular offering for high performance computing from Bull, featuring its water-cooled Cool Cabinet Door.

There’s a new entry in the market for data center containers from Bull, the French IT conglomerate. The Mobull container is designed to house up to 1,620 servers and support power loads nearing 40kW per rack. The system, which is available in 20- or 40-foot sizes, employs Bull’s water-cooled  Cool Door technology on the rear door of server cabinets. For more ifnromation, see Bull’s announcement.

A Standard for Data Center Containers?

The interior of a 40-foot container inside the new Microsoft Chicago data center, packed with servers on either side of a center aisle.

One of the keys to the success of shipping containers is standardization, as detailed by author Marc Levinson, whose book explains how containers “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.” Standardizing on a 40-foot size spurred the international growth of intermodal freight transport by either rail, ship or truck.

Is there a similar boom in store for data center containers? That may depend on whether the industry can agree on a standard for modular designs, including those using containers. Microsoft, for one, is doing its best to nudge the data center industry toward the use of standard Pre-Assembled Components (PACs), which is how the company describes the server-filled containers in its new Chicago data center.

Some may see Microsoft’s “container farm” as an outlier – an anomaly representing a particular approach unlikely to be replicated in other data centers. Could Microsoft’s effort instead represent a tipping point in a broader movement towards modular data center design? The company’s cloud operation is large enough to focus vendors’ attention on the concept, which could result in an ecosystem that lowers costs for end users.  

‘Standard Platform’
Microsoft aspires to create a container-based “standard platform that our industry can innovate around,” providing common interfaces and an RFP (request for proposal) process that allows many vendors to develop products and compete for business.

But Microsoft isn’t alone in this effort, and some industry executives warn that Microsoft’s vision of a containerized future may not work for everyone. Two other industry heavyweights, Digital Realty Trust and IBM, are also standardizing their designs around modular systems and repeatable designs that can drive the cost and delays out of data center construction, while leveraging the power of bulk purchasing and RFPs with large numbers attached to them.