As the bay door opens at Microsoft’s enormous new Chicago data center, the future backs in on a trailer. Forty-foot long containers packed with servers are unloaded with winches, and stacked two-high onto “air skates” that float on compressed air. Using the air skates, as few as four employees can move the 60-ton stack into place in Microsoft’s “container canyon” in the lower floor of the facility in Northlake, Ill.

Within eight hours, the new container is fully installed, hooked up to chilled water, power and a network connection. “These hold 2,000 servers each, and they can be deployed in hours,” said Kevin Timmons, Microsoft’s general manager for data center operations. “That’s an awesome, awesome thing.”

via Microsoft Unveils Its Container-Powered Cloud « Data Center Knowledge.

The normal Microsoft hater in me isn’t coming out in this post.  This is awesome.  I remember reading about Sun trying to do data center in a box setups before, mostly for emergency sites and disaster relief (For logistics and stuff, not so they could browse the web…)  Microsoft has been talking about doing this for a while, and while I know Chicago is a major hub peering point, I wonder why they didn’t chose to go further north to take advantage of colder weather.  I’ve been in Chicago when its been pretty hot…

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Tags: Chicago,Cooling,Data Center,Energy Efficiency
Categories: Technology
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