http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I Interesting tour of a Google "container" data center. It's been 15 years since I was part of the design and install of mainframe data centers. Some things look the same, while other are quite different. This container "method" is interesting.
I'm kind of surprised that they even made a video of this - because of security concerns. No need to make publicly known how your data center is designed. When I did work for State Farm, I traveled to some of their data centers that were in unmarked, small buildings in the middle of areas you would not think a data center would be. They did not want to advertise their location or even who was in the building.
Data center design like this is nothing new. Microsoft is using the container style design as well. It's part of their green iniatives and has a significant effect on their emissions. They can run the machines hotter and cooling is more efficient when the volume is greatly reduced and centralized. I think it's cool you can plug in a container full of machines just like you can plug in a new blade into a server chassis these days.
Modularity taken to a whole new level. Don't know how truly green it is, though, but what it gives up, it probably makes up for via redundancy, savings in replacement time, etc. They need to make it either solar powered, or run it on nuclear batteries. Or, throw up a worldwide wifi blanket and punt the whole mess into space.
