Microsoft Jams Thousands of Servers Into Boxes, Building Out $1 Billion Data Center

[Brandon]

Check out these data centers in a box from wired..

This week, Microsoft said it planned to expand the site over the next 16 months, making its total investment in Boydton just a hair under $1 billion. Microsoft says the site will include both regular old data center buildings as well as some of these cool modules, which the company calls ITPACs.

They remind me of those storage bins you can rent, fill up and they'll take them away.

It’s an energy efficient design that Microsoft has shared with the United Nations for use in an energy efficient office in Nairobi, Kenya.
These mini datacenters-in-a-box let Microsoft gradually build out its facilities without making a huge upfront investment and — bonus — cut down on building costs. A single person can build one of these units in just four days, Microsoft says. That means that the company can ramp up its servers in about half the time it takes in traditional datacenters.

 

[ProSportsForums]

I wonder if it works better than their operating systems ...

 

[Dan Hutter]

That is pretty **** awesome. Like a trailer park for servers. :D

 

[bigbigfan]

I think they could learn from Google here.

#1 - Those metal boxes will super-heat in the sun making it more expensive to cool the servers.
#2 - A simple covering structure could have kept the sun off all of them.
#3 - The covering structure could have been covered with solar panels to further reduce cooling costs and protect against a potentially critical power failure, those cooling systems can't just shut off while cores are still hot.

I'm sure they know this, I wonder why they didn't make the entire site more eco-friendly.

Oh, wait, it's not for use here at home. They are to give to other countries, I guess we can't give away our best stuff huh.