thinking sysadmin » datacenters http://andyleonard.com qstat -u aleonard -s z Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:47:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Google Data Centers or “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” http://andyleonard.com/2009/04/08/google-data-centers-or-the-future-is-already-here-its-just-not-very-evenly-distributed/ http://andyleonard.com/2009/04/08/google-data-centers-or-the-future-is-already-here-its-just-not-very-evenly-distributed/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:58:01 +0000 Andy http://andyleonard.com/?p=238 (William Gibson said that, I believe).

I see echoes of Toyota teaching its Toyota Production System in Google’s recent release of information about their data centers. Relatively straightforward concepts – the challenge is in adapting your existing systems to them.

]]> http://andyleonard.com/2009/04/08/google-data-centers-or-the-future-is-already-here-its-just-not-very-evenly-distributed/feed/ 0 Container Cult Computing http://andyleonard.com/2007/04/12/cool-stuff-but-whats-in-it-for-me/ http://andyleonard.com/2007/04/12/cool-stuff-but-whats-in-it-for-me/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:10:31 +0000 Andy http://andyleonard.com/2007/04/12/cool-stuff-but-whats-in-it-for-me/ First came Sun’s Project Blackbox; now Rackable Systems has their data-center-in-a-shipping container product, Concentro. Both appear to have put a lot of effort into solving the problem of cooling the extremely densely packed equipment within the container – Rackable’s design that eliminates the need for system-level fans is particularly neat. According to the Register, both Sun and Rackable claim to have already have customers lined up for their respective products, but for what must be the vast majority of their clients, this is space-shot stuff – and those clients’ businesses are more about getting across town than getting to the moon.

The question relevant to most data center operators is if this technology will trickle-down, Apollo-program-style to products relevant to their needs. The typical data center is a mix of hardware of different ages and from different vendors – and using AC power. That would seem to rule out Rackable’s remove-the-system fans cooling approach. It is worth noting that, according to Ars Technica, Sun will sell Blackbox for something in the $300,000 to $500,000 range; the user will still need to bring network, power and cooled water to the container at an additional cost. At that price, that’s probably competitive with construction costs for a similar number of conventionally-housed server room racks for many sites – so why bother with a container unless you truly need to be mobile or use underutilized space (a roof, for instance)?

What I’m really hoping to see is Sun – or Rackable, or someone else – take the technology that they’re using to make dense environments like these work without overheating, and make it available to conventional, non-container datacenters. Kind of like what HP is doing. I don’t need to put my servers in a container (today, at least), I just need to keep them cool.

News about Concentro originally seen at Data Center Knowledge.

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