Microsoft Responds to Container Skepticism
Microsoft data center executive Mike Manos has responded to last week's ComputerWorld article outlining the reasons Microsoft's approach to installing data center equipment in shipping containers won't work. Manos has published a post on his Random Thoughts blog (link via Dave Ohara) addressing the challenges outlined in Eric Lai's story "6 reasons why Microsoft's container-based approach to data centers won't work." Here's an excerpt:
My first response was "only six"? You only found six reasons why it won't work? Internally we thought of a whole lot more than that when the concept first appeared on our drawing boards. ... Ultimately, containers are but the first step in a journey which we intend to shake the industry up with. If the thought process around containers scares you then, the innovations, technology advances and challenges currently in various states of thought, pilot and implementation will be downright terrifying. I guess in short, you should prepare for a vigorous stirring of the anthill.That's a summary of a long, detailed post that addresses each of the issues raised by ComputerWorld and provides Microsoft's views and solutions. If you're interested in data center containers, it's a worthwhile read.
Posted by Rich Miller 
May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
May 09, 2008
A Skeptical Look at Containers
The "data center in a box" approach to container computing has been controversial from the start. The merits and drawbacks of packing servers into shipping containers have been vigorously debated from day one (see Sun's Blackbox: Game Changer or Niche Product? from October 2006). Some of the industry's largest players are embracing the concept, especially Microsoft (MSFT).
But the skeptics remain many, and their critiques are summarized by ComputerWorld, which outlines six reasons containers won't work. Eric Lai interviewed data center professionals and consultants, and reports that they "were individually impressed with some parts of Microsoft's plan, (but) also expressed skepticism that the idea will work in the long term."
Posted by Rich Miller May 09, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
May 07, 2008
Microsoft: 300,000 Servers in Container Farm
Microsoft will be able to pack up to 300,000 servers into the data center "container farm" it is building on the first floor of its new Chicago data center. By packing the 40-foot shipping containers with data center equipment, Microsoft will be able to manage extraordinarily dense server environments.
"We'll move from about 400 to 450 watts per square foot to 1,200 watts a square foot," said Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services. "Containers are really, really cool."
Those specs were among the many big numbers shared by Chrapaty in her hour-long keynote address at the recent Microsoft Management Summit, which was noted earlier this week by Dave Ohara, who posted video of the keynote (Windows Media).
Microsoft hasn't disclosed its total number of servers, but Chrapaty told the MMS audience that the company's infrastructure is growing by 10,000 servers per month. Here's some context for that number: Last week we noted that Facebook now has 10,000 servers powering its platform. That means that every month Microsoft is essentially adding a Facebook worth of servers.
Posted by Rich Miller May 07, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
May 05, 2008
Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Is Dead. Now What?
The weekend's big news was Microsoft's withdrawal of its offer to buy Yahoo. The blogosphere is filled with speculation about who won, who lost and what happens next. Here's a sampling:
- On the data center front, the deal's collapse means we won't be seeing a massive integration of the two companies' facilities, and that Microsoft won't wind up running major services on rival open source technologies. The deal's failure probably makes life less complicated for Rackable (RACK) and DuPont Fabros (DFT), who rely on Microsoft and Amazon for the bulk of their revenue. See our story Microsoft, Yahoo and Their Data Centers for the history on this.
- Yahoo's stock is expected to drop Monday, perhaps nearing the $20 a share valuation prior to Microsoft's offer. This is bad news for shareholders, including any arbitrageurs betting that the deal would go through, but also many Yahoo employees as well. Some analysts suggested a stock buyback to support Yahoo shares.
- Jerry Yang has posted a message to Yahoo employees on the Yodel Anecdotal blog. Yang said critics have "underestimated the determination of Yahoo!’s incredible people, spirit and culture."
- There's an active debate about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. TechCrunch asks whether Ballmer's job is in jeopardy, while Kara Switzer says Ballmer will be leaving when pigs fly.
Posted by Rich Miller May 05, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
May 01, 2008
3D Look at Microsoft's Container Data Center
Matt from SearchDataCenter has posted several videos from his discussions with Microsoft's Mike Manos at the Uptime Institute Symposium. One provides a 3D "drive through" of an infrastructure model for Microsoft's new container data center in Chicago, which provides a sense of how tightly packed the containers are.
There's also a video in which Manos talks about and demos Scry, which is Microsoft's tool for data center analytics. Check it out at the Server Specs blog. For moreinformation, see our coverage of Microsoft's container initiative.
Posted by Rich Miller May 01, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 28, 2008
Microsoft Funds Low-Power Data Center Studies
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will award $500,000 in research grants to major universities exploring new approaches to data center power efficiency, power management and the creation of low-power parallel computing architecture, the company said today. The program encourages researchers to use novel approaches in hardware design, software, networking, benchmarking, analysis, virtualization and any other avenue that might provide improvements in the field.
The $500,000 will be awarded among the four schools. Here's an overview of the projects:
- Control-Theoretic Power and Performance Management for Green Data Centers: A team at the University of Tennessee is developing frameworks for integrating power and performance improvements in virtualized data centers.
- Building a Building-scale Power Analysis Infrastructure: Stanford University researchers are working on the design and deployment of a dense sensor network for power analysis, producing data for future research on power-aware computing.
Posted by Rich Miller April 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 23, 2008
Roundup: Microsoft Mesh Unveiled
Last night's launch of Microsoft Mesh is a hot topic today on tech news sites and blogs. Here are some quick links to help understand Mesh, and some early impressions;
- Live Mesh: Everything We've Told You About: The LiveSide blog, which has provided much of the early news about Mesh and its capabilities, provides an overview and screen shots.
- Making Sense of Live Mesh: A Q-and-A from News.com. "If your eyes are glossing over from all the mentions of seamlessness, synchronization, and software plus services, here's our best attempt at making sense of things."
- Live Mesh: The Version You Can Understand: Mashable also opts for a Q-and-A approach. the short version: "Live Mesh is a service that lets you synchronize your settings, files, feeds and applications on several computers."
Posted by Rich Miller April 23, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 21, 2008
A Look Inside Microsoft's Data Center Containers
Given the computationally intense nature of creating the 3D models, the storage requirements for the operation are staggering. The new lab servers each have 8 "cores" — CPUs essentially — totaling more than 5000 cores and supporting more than 10 petabytes of data. When factored in with lab servers located in the facility’s building - now also wind-powered - the total storage capacity supporting the Virtual Earth operation in Boulder is 15 petabytes. To put this into perspective, a typical consumer camera is around 5 megabytes. It would take three billion of these images to fill the 15 petabytes of storage: the equivalent of 10 photos for every person in the US.Microsoft says the Boulder units are wind powered containers using offsets purchased from Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy.
Posted by Rich Miller April 21, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 18, 2008
Microsoft Unveils Wind-Powered Containers
When Microsoft announced that it would fill an entire floor of its new Chicago facility with container-based data centers, we noted that it was test-driving some Verari container units at a facility in Boulder, Colorado. Yesterday Microsoft had a media event at the Boulder site, in which it showed off three containers housing servers for its Virtual Earth mapping program.
Microsoft noted that the containers were "100 percent wind powered" through offsets purchased from Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy. While these particular units weren't powered directly by wind turbines, Microsoft has tapped into a major advantage of containers: they can easily be placed near renewable energy sources, allowing companies to chase green power to meet carbon reduction goals.
Posted by Rich Miller April 18, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 16, 2008
Google vs. Microsoft in Data Center Economics
There's been some interesting reaction around the web to the Google Data Center FAQ and Pingdom's wildly popular map of Google's network. Dave Ohara at the Green Data Center Blog asks an interesting question: "Does anyone say 'hey look where Google went, let's follow them?' "
Many state and local governments have passed tax incentives to attract a Google data center, hoping it will convert struggling regions into high-tech hubs. It's part of a trend in which more economic development agencies are pursuing data center projects. There's no question that favorable environments can create data center clusters, a trend seen in many technology corridors. But here's the secret: If you're focused on developing a data center cluster in your area, you should be chasing Microsoft, not Google.
For evidence, look no further than a story published Saturday about Microsoft's data center project in San Antonio, which has triggered a big spike in data center development. A similar boom occurred after Microsoft (MSFT)announced plans to build a data center in Quincy, Washington.
Posted by Rich Miller April 16, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 09, 2008
Microsoft Files Distributed Computing Patent
Earlier in the week we noted that Microsoft has filed patent applications on a number of cloud computing concepts. We've found one more filing that may be of interest: On Sept. 29, 2006, Microsoft applied for a patent on "distributed parallel computing," listing the developers of Dryad as the inventors.
Here's a brief description of the invention cited in the patent filing:
A general purpose high-performance distributed execution engine for coarse-grained data-parallel applications is proposed that allows developers to easily create large-scale distributed applications without requiring them to master concurrency techniques beyond being able to draw a graph of the data-dependencies of their algorithms. Based on the graph, a job manager intelligently distributes the work load so that system resources are used efficiently. The system is designed to scale from a small cluster of a few computers, or the multiple CPU cores on a powerful single computer, up to a data center containing thousands of servers.Dryad is an infrastructure which allows a programmer to use the resources of a computer cluster or a data center for running data-parallel programs. A Dryad programmer can use thousands of machines, each of them with multiple processors or cores, without knowing anything about concurrent programming. A full description is available (PDF).
Posted by Rich Miller April 09, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
Red Dog: Microsoft's Developer Cloud Platform
Now that Google has entered the utility computing fray with Google App Engine, many cloud computing enthusiasts are wondering whether Microsoft will offer a similar developer-focused platform. The folks at Live Side have uncovered job postings indicating Microsoft is preparing a competing service called Red Dog. An excerpt:
We did a little digging, and although nothing specific has been announced yet (and we don't have a timetable), a new set of services, part of Ray Ozzie's four layer platform of services, is indeed being readied. One of these, the Microsoft Utility Computing Platform, code named Red Dog, sounds very much like a platform for building a Google App Engine type service (except maybe quite a bit better). In a job posting for an SDET, the Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team has provided us with some of the juicy tidbits we found.The job listings describe a service featuring an "efficient, virtualized" environment with a "fully automated service management system" that can "scale to millions of machines." Read LiveSide for the full story.
Posted by Rich Miller April 09, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
April 07, 2008
Microsoft Seeking to Patent the Cloud?
Seen on the Slashdot Firehose: TheODP, who has a keen eye for technology patent stories, notes that Microsoft has applied for at least six patents on cloud computing concepts. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie are each named on two of the submissions. Here are links to the applications:
- Communication Link Generation In A Cloud
- Resilient Communications Between Clients Comprising A Cloud
- Rich Index To Cloud-Based Resources
- Hardware Architecture For Cloud Services
- Migrating Data To New Cloud
- Marketplace For Cloud Services Resources
Most of the patent applications were filed in September 2006, about 11 months after Ozzie's famous memo (The Internet Services Disruption). I'm not a patent expert, but there was enough activity in cloud computing (and related terms and technologies) at that time that I gather there may be some interesting discussion about these patent applications and their potential impact.
Posted by Rich Miller April 07, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter
ALL STORIES FROM THIS CATEGORY:
- Microsoft Responds to Container Skepticism
- A Skeptical Look at Containers
- Microsoft: 300,000 Servers in Container Farm
- Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Is Dead. Now What?
- 3D Look at Microsoft's Container Data Center
- Microsoft Funds Low-Power Data Center Studies
- Roundup: Microsoft Mesh Unveiled
- A Look Inside Microsoft's Data Center Containers
- Microsoft Unveils Wind-Powered Containers
- Google vs. Microsoft in Data Center Economics
- Microsoft Files Distributed Computing Patent
- Red Dog: Microsoft's Developer Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Seeking to Patent the Cloud?
- Data Center Condos: New from Microsoft
- Microsoft's 198 Megawatts of Motivation
- Microsoft Embraces Data Center Containers
- Washington State 'Server Farm' Tax Break Fails
- Ray Ozzie on Utility Computing
- Microsoft To Release Best Practices on Energy
- 12 Million SF of New Microsoft Data Centers?
- Windows Live Problems, Hotmail Down
- Microsoft May Keep Yahoo Apps on Open Source
- Microsoft Iowa Incentives Sent to Governor
- Microsoft Considering Iowa Data Center
- It's True: Microsoft Bids $44B for Yahoo
- Microsoft Quincy Data Center Metrics
- Microsoft Confirms 'Data Center In a Box'
- Microsoft Building Own CDN Network
- Microsoft: Grey Water Swayed Site Location
- Microsoft Plans Data Center in Siberia
- More Details on Microsoft's Chicago Project
- Microsoft Confirms Dublin Data Center Plans
- Microsoft Plans $500M Illinois Data Center
- Microsoft Data Center Blogs
- HP's Belady Heads to Microsoft
- Microsoft Plans $500M Dublin Data Center
- Microsoft Assumes Savvis Leases for $200M
- Microsoft's Manos: "More To Come"
- Microsoft Plans $500M Dublin Data Center