Microsoft Communities

A Data Center Built With Shipping Containers

Posted By: Joshua Allen | Apr 2nd @ 4:06 PM
Yesterday, Microsoft became the first in the industry to announce a data center designed entirely with shipping container-based server modules.  It's a sizable data center, supporting somewhere between 150,000 an 440,000 servers.  Mike Manos revealed some specifics about the Chicago data center at a talk at Data Center World.

James Hamilton has some commentary on his blog.  James has been evangelizing the advantages of shipping container-based data centers for years, inside the company and within the industry.  As he points out, several of the largest equioment companies are now providing containers, and you can be sure that we are not the only company buying them.  But this is the first time anyone has talked publicly about a real industry-scale data center designed from the ground up for containers.  I'm particularly interested by the fact that the containers use angle parking instead of being arranged at right angles.

This is a big accomplishment, and no doubt a sign of where the rest of the industry will be moving in coming years.  Congratulations to Mike, James, and the rest of the team!
Tags: ,

Page Navigation