Microsoft: Portable datacenters are key

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Microsoft has already shown its enthusiasm for portabledatacenters, which cram hundreds of servers into a standard 20-foot(6.1 meter) shipping container that can be delivered wherever it'sneeded, so long as there is a power supply and network connection.
The company has said it will put more than 200 of them on the firstfloor of a datacenter it's building in Chicago, and it is alreadyoperating at least one of its online services, Virtual Earth, froma portable datacenter in Colorado.
"The idea of modular, portable datacenters is key to theindustry’s future," said Daniel Costello, Microsoft directorof datacenter research, in a presentation at GigaOM's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco. "That’s why I’m here totalk about datacenters, not just for Microsoft but for ourcustomers as well."
Buying these boxes from server vendors can be more energy-efficientand cost-effective than building a new, traditional datacenter, hesaid, and Microsoft sees them as more than just a way to add extracomputing capacity at short notice. "We see them as a primarypackaging unit," he said.
Using shipping containers is part of an effort by Microsoft toradically rethink its datacenters, as it tries to add morecomputing capacity in a way that is cost effective and powerefficient. "At Microsoft, we're questioning every component in thedatacenter, up to and including the roof," Costello said. Thatincludes "eliminating concrete from our datacenter bills."