

Microsoft's radical 4th-generation datacenter design - wmf
http://loosebolts.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/our-vision-for-generation-4-modular-data-centers-one-way-of-getting-it-just-right/

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Retric
I would hate to be the person swapping HDD in that environment. I can't help
but wonder how much savings you get by building that type of data center.
Let's say you are averaging around 500$ PC's per square foot a data center
floor. Is not building a roof really going to save that much cash to pay for
the increase in failure rate? I think building a wallmart style building with
highly custom duckt work would end up using less material on walls and let you
add more redundancy to the ventilation system even if you are just venting in
outside air.

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spolsky
I don't think these kinds of facilities swap hard drives. If one fails, you
have others. By the time a lot of them fail, the whole container is probably
obsolete anyway... you swap it out for a new one shipped from wherever they're
manufactured.

Why would you get increased failure rate without the roof? Shipping containers
are designed to be weatherproof.

One of the the biggest advantages with the containers is that you can
manufacture entire containers of servers wherever it's cheapest and ship them
anywhere in the world for about $3000. Think how much you save on the labor of
racking up servers if you can do it in China. The server never has to see the
inside of a cardboard box, either.

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Retric
You could be right, but I don't think you can completely separate your CPU,
Motherboard, and RAM. If they are each 50$ and one fails then replacing a 50$
component will rescue two 50$ components which is a net gain if it cost's less
than 100$ in manpower to do the swap. Without temperature control the failure
rate will increase some. I guess they could work on a 3 month cycle and move
the container to a nearby repair location. Thinking about it there is probably
some interesting trade offs depending on the local labor supply etc. But
giving up the ability to repair PC's is a significant cost.

In the US 400,000 square feet of warehouse is around $19/square foot and you
could avoid weatherproof all those containers and electric cables. You could
also use larger more efficient fan's to move all that hot air. And you could
use the space for other reasons if you don't want to use that land just for a
data center. Unlike this custom building which is going to be hard to use for
other things.

 _Why would you get increased failure rate without the roof?_ Bugs, animals,
and weather, combined with a defective container. Then again if they only need
to last 3 years the failure rate is probably going to be low.

PS: I think of a rack as 100k+ worth of equipment that lasts for 3 years that
has a vary small footprint and uses a lot of energy. But, when you start
building data centers like MS or Google I guess the buildings start becoming
expensive on their own.

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bemmu
Wouldn't bugs and weather also be a problem if you had a defective building?

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Retric
I think this is a defense in depth issue, with large walls to cut down on wind
you can use really simple roof over what you want to protect and you end up
with a strong defense vs rain, wind, and snow. When the outside is 1 foot from
your equipment a 1 in 1000 fault becomes a problem, but you can use two 1 in
50 solutions to end up with better protection if the failures don't cascade.
(1/50 * 1/50 = 1/2500.)

PS: A friend built some really cheep rooms using plastic and plywood inside an
old barn that had large gaps in the walls but an OK roof to protect his record
collection on the cheep.

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redorb
"A highly modular, scalable, efficient, just-in-time data center capacity
program that can be delivered anywhere in the world very quickly and cheaply,
while allowing for continued growth as required."

that was their "1 sentence explanation" Buzzword Buzzword Buzzword...

\- also reading this made me wonder why microsoft hasn't launched a blog
product yet... (if they have sorry ;( haven't seen it)

~~~
Elepsis
<http://spaces.live.com> provides a Microsoft-branded and run blogging
service.

