By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com
October 20, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) has announced the completion of the first phase of its Chicago data center, which is the first data center facility to extensively use standard shipping containers as a primary server-packaging unit.
According to an announcement Monday, Phase 1 delivered the core infrastructure needed to run the data center including load banks, power, cooling and security. When completed, the Chicago data center will be one of the world’s largest, housing hundreds of thousands of servers to support Microsoft’s Software plus Services strategy.
The center will comprise 40-foot shipping containers, each loaded with approximately 2,500 servers each, enabling Microsoft to add capacity quickly.
Microsoft global foundation services data center services general manager Mike Manos noted in his blog that Phase 1 has taken only one year and when the entire facility is completed, it will have the ability to rapidly scale to hundreds of thousands of servers.
“Today we finished the first phase of construction and we are rolling into the testing of container-based deployments,” Manos wrote. “Our facility in Chicago is our first purpose-built data center to accommodate containers on a large scale. It has been an incredibly interesting journey. The challenges of solving things that have never been done before are many. We even had to create our own container specification, one specifically with the end-user in mind to ensure we maximized the cost and efficiency gains possible, not to mention standard blocking and tackling issues like standardizing power, water, network and other interfaces. All sorts of interesting things have been discovered, corrected, and perfected. From electrical harmonics issues to streamlining materials movement, to whole new operational procedures.”
While the practicality of containerized data centers remains a much-debated issue, this project represents Microsoft’s continued interest in developing data center infrastructure using containers.
Microsoft has also announced it is holding a private customer event at its Chicago data center in 2009 to share best practices and lessons learned in making data centers more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. This event will be the second Microsoft Datacenter eXperience customer event, following its first MDX event at the opening of its $55 million San Antonio data center in September.
