Lots of small companies want to hire an IT department in a can… You know, the ones who hire only one person to run their Linux servers, code their websites, architect their networks, support their users and order more printer toner. It’s a hard job, but it’s pretty common to see them advertised. What I never dreamed I would see is an entire data center in a can… Literally, in a can… Or at least a shipping container, which is really not that far off.
Leave it to Sun though. Not only have they packed an entire datacenter into a shipping container, they have packed a really good datacenter into a shipping container. Complete with integrated power, cooling, fire suppression, cable managment and redundant everything, this little server room-in-a-box has it all. They even showed off how tough it is by putting it through an earthquake!
All told, I really like the idea of my brand new datacenter rolling in on the back of a tractor-trailer truck. It kinda reminds me of the setup the bad guys had in latest Die Hard movie. I just hope nobody buys one and hires only one person to run it.
Aside from military or First Response hotzone applications, what’s the real value of this thing? Data centres aren’t made to house an 18-wheeler, and things you can wheel in quickly can also be wheeled out.
What, stash a black thing in our parking lot, with feeble 50kv umbilicals to light it? No. I use a card to access the DC at work, and that’s for a reason.
Now, a full rack cabinet one can ship, unload, wheel in and light up in an hour, that’d make me weak in the knees. Dynamically managing resources in my vmware clusters? I don’t mind even cold migration if it means we can empty an old DC in a night, upgrade it, and then move other resources in (round-robin upgrades on a 20 years plan still means one a year)
[...] – Cliff R. Pearson [...]