Building A Data Center

• Building A Data Center Power Room in Five Days

  March 2nd, 2011 : Rich Millerin http://www.datacenterknowledge.com
  

  An NxPower electrical room module from NxGen Modular is installed at a new data center site. The installation of 1 megawatt of power equipment took just five days.
  NxGen Modular has deployed a 1 megawatt power room for a customer in just five days, the company said this week, offering an example of how modular deployment can speed the data center construction process. NxGen Modular launched in October with a flexible “building block” approach that assembles factory-built modules into a 3,600 square foot data center with an attached electrical room module.
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• Astro Container Aids Quake-Damaged Hospital

  February 25th, 2011 : Rich Miller
  

  San Diego business andpolitical leaders tour Astro Energy Group's Emergency Mobile Data Center (EMDC).
  Astro Energy Group of San Diego today launched a  portable data center, known as the Emergency Mobile Data Center (EMDC), and delivered the first unit to El Centro Regional Medical Center, which had its primary data center condemned due to damage from an earthquake in April 2010.
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• First Look: Cannon T4 Modular Data Centers

  January 5th, 2011 : Rich Miller
  Here’s a look at a company that makes racks and enclosures and has expanded into the modular data center market. The UK-based Cannon Technologies makes the T4 ­Modular Data Center, a modular unit that can be deployed either indoors or outdoors and configured to the needs of military or enterprise users. The modules can include aisle containment (referred to as “cocooning” in the video) and use in-row cooling units to manage high-density workloads. This video, which reviews the T4 unit’s capabilities, runs about 4 minutes.
  For more news on modular data centers, visit our Data Center Containers. For additional video, check out our i/o Data Centers Channel and the Data Center Videoschannel on YouTube.
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• EDI Wins eBay Modular Design Contest

  December 15th, 2010 : Rich Miller
  

  The site in Phoenix where eBay is commencing construction on an 8,000 square foot data center. The company is seeking design submissions for a rooftop container installation.
  The team of EDI, AHA Consulting Engineers and Winterstreet Architects has won a design contest to build a modular data center for eBay in Phoenix. The outcome of the unusual public request for proposals (RFP) was announced on Data Center Pulse by Dean Nelson, eBay’s Senior Director of Global Data Center Strategy.
  The winning design from the EDI team will be used in an 8,000 square foot data center that eBay is building in Phoenix, which will be able to accommodate up to 12 server-filled containers on its roof. The two-story building will also include raised-floor space on its first floor. The EDI concept included “hot water cooling” to support the requirement for year-round use of fresh air cooling (free cooling), despite the temperatures in Phoenix.
  “This has been an extremely interesting process for us with an unexpected result,” Nelson wrote. “EDI, a small company that we had never even heard of before, was able to meet all of the challenging requirements we had proposed to the industry through the Modular RFP process in a cost effective, simple design.”
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• Gartner: Modular Data Centers ‘Make Sense’

  December 14th, 2010 : Rich Miller
  Will data center containers ever be popular in the enterprise? That’s been a topic of debate since Sun Microsystems introduced its Blackbox container in 2006. Four years later, there are signs of growing traction for these factory-built facilities, now usually referred to as modular data centers. That shift was reflected in comments last week from a Gartner analyst at the company’s annual Data Center Conference.
  “You’ll be hearing a lot about modular designs from vendors, and from Gartner,” said analyst David Cappuccio, who said the modular design approach “just makes sense.”
  Gartner’s focus on modular data centers is significant, given the research firm’s wide following in enterprise IT. Cappuccio said the modular approach appealed to enterprise customers’ focus on timely deployment and incremental expansion, which allows companies to deploy capital gradually. Several data center executives noted that advice from Gartner frequently comes up in discussions with enterprise customers.
  Strides for Modular Designs
  Cappuccio’s comments come at the close of a year in which modular designs have made significant strides. Running servers in shipping containers has been viewed as a niche play by many in the data center industry, limited to mobile requirements, temporary capacity, or novel designs like the cloud  computing facilities being built by Microsoft and Google.
  But new designs from HP, Dell and new players like BladeRoom and NxGen have gone “beyond the box” with designs that look more like traditional data centers than shipping containers. The change in vocabulary, from “containers” to ” modular” may also be easing any stigma attached to early container concepts.
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• Inside SGI’s Air-Cooled Modular Data Center

  December 13th, 2010 : Rich Miller
  

  Data Center Knowledge recently got a detailed video tour of the retooled SGI ICE Cube modular data center, which features fresh air cooling.
  SGI was one of the early players in the container data center sector with its water-cooled ICE Cube portable unit. Last week the company unveiled a retooled ICE Cube modular data center that can be cooled entirely by air. The fresh air cooling allows the unit to run outdoors in cool climates, improving energy efficiency by foregoing mechanical refrigeration. At the Gartner Data Center Conference, SGI’s Patrick Yantz gave DCK a detailed tour of the new unit. Patrick provides an overview of the new orientation of the ICE Cube module, which allows easy expansion, and demonstrates how SGI’s software management package can remotely throttle fans up and down. This video runs about 13 minutes.
  For a comparison, see our 2008 video tour of the original ICE Cube Container built by Rackable, SGI’s predecessor company.
  For more news on modular data centers, visit our Data Center Containers Channel. For additional video, check out our i/o Data Centers Channel and the Data Center Videoschannel on YouTube.
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• ‘Container Colo’ Coming to Silicon Valley

  December 6th, 2010 : Rich Miller
  Large facilities customized for data center containers were originally the province of huge cloud builders like Google and Microsoft. But a small but growing number of companies are offering multi-tenant “container colo” centers that allow companies to quickly deploy containers or modular data centers in third-party space.
  This new type of facility will soon get a test-drive in Silicon Valley. In the next several weeks Pelio & Associates will install three container data centers in a facility on Space Park Drive in Santa Clara, Calif. Pelio hopes to fill the 24,000 square foot building with up to 23 containers for customers seeking to rapidly deploy capacity.
  Pelio has developed a number of data centers in Santa Clara, and partnered with its Digital Realty Trust on several more. Les Pelio, the founder of Pelio & Associates, believes the market is ready for something new and different.
  Focusing on Speed to Market 
  “We’re really focused on speed-to-market and lower cost,” said Pelio. “This really brings the concept together. As a developer, it allows for strategic deployment of capital.”
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• AST Modular Powers Iceland’s THOR Facility

  December 2nd, 2010 : Rich Miller
  

  A view of the interior of an AST Modular Natural Free Cooling container at the THOR data center in Iceland.
  One of the companies focusing on the modular data center market is AST, which has carved out a niche as a wholesale provider of containerized and modular offerings, most notably for IBM’s Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC). The Barcelona-based company, previously known as AST Global, said today that it has rebranded as AST Modular and launched a new web site. “Our new name shows AST’s determination in becoming the leading global specialist in modular data centers,” says CEO Henry Daunert. “This specialization started back in Q2 2005 when we became the second provider in the world to engineer and deliver a containerized data center. Almost 6 years later customers continue to demand scalable solutions.” One of those AST customers is the THOR Data Center in Iceland, which recently deployed a container data center facility in Hafnarfjorour for customers including Web browser developer Opera. In this video, Daunert provides a tour of the AST container deployed at THOR, which uses AST’s Natural FreeCooling module. This video runs about 8 minutes. UPDATE: The video link has now been updated after some problems with the original source.
  Check out our Data Center Containers Channel for other perspectives on these topics. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videoschannel on YouTube.
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• Dell Modular Facility Accelerates Deployment

  November 18th, 2010 : Rich Miller
  

  A look at Dell Modular Data Center (MDC) units deployed by Australian wholesale service provider Tier 5.
  In a building not far from its Austin headquarters, Dell has created an assembly line for a different kind of  data center. The process begins with individual components, like network cables being lined up for staging. In some cases, it ends with more than 1 megawatt of data center capacity rolling down the highway on large trucks.
  The new Dell Modular Data Center (MDC) is one example of how Dell’s Data Center Solutions unit is positioning the company for a new environment in which  servers are delivered by the rackload, and sometimes by the container.
  This model promises to accelerate deployment time for data center capacity, shifting the racking and testing of servers from the customer premises to the manufacturer. As modular designs gain traction, facilities like Dell’s Austin site are where many of the gains in deployment time will be realized.
  Big Orders for Big Customers
  The Data Center Solutions (DCS) unit’s focus on modular products reflects its mandate of filling big orders for big customers with specialized needs. The emergence of cloud computing has set apart the requirements of the largest cloud builders, who operate at enormous scale. The DCS team works closely with these customers to optimize servers and storage for their applications, which may run across thousands or even tens of thousands of servers.
  “The Modular Data Center is for customers who really get the benefits  of scale,” said Andy Rhodes. Marketing Director for Dell DCS. “This isn’t just ‘container fever.’ We’re taking a very focused approach to the market.”
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