Intel Considering Portable Data Centers
It's been more than a year since Sun Microsystems (JAVAD) announced Project Blackbox, its container-based "data center in a box." We've been closely tracking developments with portable data centers, including the subsequent product announcements from Rackable (RACK). The concept has generated much interest and discussion, but deployment has thus far been limited to a Blackbox at Stanford and three ICE Cube customer shipments by Rackable.
This week there's evidence that one of the tech sector's biggest names is thinking portable. In a recent issue of its Premier IT magazine (via John Rath), Intel indicated that it is taking a serious look at deploying portable data centers in shipping containers. Here's a summary from Martin Menard, the director of Intel's Platform Capability Group:
The cost of building a new data center is extremely high — between $40 million and $60 million. As an alternative, we are considering placing high-density servers on racks in a container similar to those you see on container ships and trucks. We estimate that the same server capacity in this container solution will reduce facility costs by 30 percent to 50 percent versus a brick-and-mortar installation. Because it’s a small, contained environment, cooling costs are far less than for traditional data centers. Even if we build a warehouse-like structure to house the containers (thus addressing security and environmental concerns), the cost is dramatically less per square foot. In fact, the difference is so great that with this solution, brick-and-mortar data centers may become a thing of the past.Intel appears to still be in the "considering" mode and apparently hasn't baked portable data centers into its current data center consolidation. Microsoft engineers have also expressed interest in container-based data centers. Sun has announced a large-scale deployment of 30 Blackboxes for an underground data center in Japan, but that project will not be completed until mid-2010.
Posted by Rich Miller 
November 20, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
November 16, 2007
Intel: How to Tackle A Major Consolidation
Planning and logistics are critical to the success of a major data consolidation. And consolidation projects don't get much bigger than the one currently underway at Intel (INTC), which is consolidating 133 data centers worldwide into just eight high-density facilities.
The process is driven by challenges in power and cooling in legacy data centers. More than 60 percent of Intel's data centers are at least 10 years old, with designs that make it difficult to capture the benefits of virtualization and energy-saving technologies. The consolidation process will take eight years to complete, and will overhaul many aspects of Intel's infrastructure.
"The transition is pretty major for all our business units," said Uttam Shetty, the Director of Data Center Efficiency at Intel. "All of the businesses (at Intel) have been open to these changes. It took a quarter or so to align the rest of the corporation, and there are some technical challenges within the design process. What we have done is show the benefits as we go to various business units."
Intel's task is made somewhat easier by the fact that it has space in existing facilities for the new data center space, so there's no new construction required. When the consolidation is completed, Intel will have added about 300,000 square feet of new space in those eight sites, which will be strategically located in the US, Europe and Asia. Intel is not identifying the location of their new facilities. It has existing state-of-the-art data centers in Oregon and New Mexico.
Posted by Rich Miller November 16, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
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