Container Data Center will help enterprises build "cloud storage" platform

Later, vendors claimed that their box-style truck solutions were quickly recognised by the market, especially by SaaS providers, which needed to use cloud computing platforms to provide their services.

At least one analyst, for example, says Rackable BAE will provide key cloud customers with data centers in trucks. "We still believe the company is preparing to support the container-type data center in the second half of this year," said Tom Curlin of Royal Bank of Canada's capital markets company in yesterday's study. We believe it was originally designed for Yahoo or Amazon, and we believe that Rackable CEO Barrenechea will spend a considerable amount of time looking for opportunities to work with MSN because the backlog has exceeded 200 million dollars. "

Curlin refers to Microsoft's latest container-type data center activity. For example, Microsoft is Northlake building a new data center worth 500 million of dollars, which is installing more than 200 separate containers in the data center. These containers are equipped with Microsoft's own cloud computing technology, supporting Microsoft's various services, including Windows Live, Xblox Live, Office Live, Hotmail, MSN video, HealthVault, Hosted HTC collaboration and FlexGo.

In an interview earlier this month, Debra Chrapaty, vice president of Microsoft's global infrastructure services, revealed some of these requirements for storage, saying the Live Search service handles 2.1 billion queries a month, including more than 20 billion files, 400 million images, and 7 million instant answers. Leveraging Cblox can help companies quickly extend computing and storage resources to the level required for activity, and cost less than building a new datacenter.

Chrapaty says it could cost billions of dollars to build a large data center. On the contrary, the cost of the container-type data center is generally about 500,000 dollars, manufacturers are generally unwilling to disclose the actual price.

Container-type data centers are also greener than traditional data centers. First, they take up less space. Sun claims that its modular datacenter data center occupies only one-eighth of the space in the same capacity as normal data centers, reducing the cost of cooling by 40%.

There are also problems with energy consumption. Verari's Dara container requires 40 watts of power, which indicates that this DARA container data center has a 110% higher energy efficiency than traditional data centers.

Of course, the data provided by these vendors are unconfirmed. But some customers who used the container-type data center earlier appeared to be more satisfied with the product. "Sun MD Not only immediately solves our growing demand for computing resources, but also greatly reduces the cost of energy consumption," said John van de Pew, a service manager at Radboud University Nijmegen Jude Loo in the Netherlands. "

All the manufacturers believe that the market is moving forward. Rackable did not say whether it would be evaluated for the container-type data center program that entered Microsoft. But the company is developing ice Box and is expected to sell 20 to 50 container-type data centers by the end of the year.

Rackable also intends to increase the amount of computing and storage resources for each 20-foot or 40-foot container data center by one-fold. For example, the current maximum configuration for a 40-foot container data center consists of 1400 servers or 7PB of storage. In the next two months, these figures will double. And Rackable will allow customers to use other vendors ' equipment in their container-type data centers.

In contrast, Microsoft's customizable Cblox container data center can hold 1000 to 2000 servers, and its new data center has more than 220 such container-type data centers, including 440,000 servers.

Sun Modular datacenters holds up to 2,240 server cores and up to 3PB of storage capacity.

Verari also launched a new 40-foot Dara container data center, which can accommodate up to 1400 servers, 11.5PB of storage capacity, and support other vendors ' hardware devices.

Hardware devices that support Third-party vendors will become very important later. "As long as they get good support, vendor-neutral configurations will be more popular with users," says Rich Ptak of Ptak,noel Associates. The concept of a modular datacenter is a cost-effective solution that may be attractive to some businesses. "

There are also many media and analysts who are not bullish or opposed to container-type data centers. Michael Manos, senior director of Microsoft Data Center services, published a blog post on May 12 to dissect various objections to the container-type data center.