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Inside Dell's containerized data centers

Gordon Ross

Space in front of the racks ? 

From the photos, it seems a bit tight in there. It doesn't look to me like there's enough room to pull a server out to replace it. Unless the whole front of the container opens up?

Sarev

Go on; I have to ask... 

Go

Finger-in-the-air, what would one of these cost, fully populated with high-end multi-core Xeon systems?

Also, how many cores would you be talking about (presumably 8 core CPU x 2 sockets x 2400 rack units)?

Jeffrey Nonken

Wow 

Thumb Up

It almost seems like Dell did some market research. Imagine that.

Good job.

Ben

Re: Space in front of the racks ? 

Have to agree, it will be a tight squeeze. Looking around, I believe a shipping container is 8' wide, so 96". Out of that comes 39" for the depth of the rack, and then 36" for the depth of a full-size server at the front. That leaves 21" at the back, which isn't a huge amount but I guess is just about enough to get into if you need to swap a cable or something. I sure wouldn't want to go right to the far end if I was claustophobic though.

John

Wayne's World 2 

Seems Dell learned Jim Morrison's lesson for Wayne and Garth that there is a difference between building a concert venue and booking the bands.

Daniel Garcia

a sauna! 

Flame

with all the heat enclosed there they forgot to include the sauna room for maximum energy efficency.

working there looks as atractive as work in a core deep gold mine.

Anonymous Coward

Fire the designer... 

Paris Hilton

Surely it would be more efficient to have the racks going along the outside edge; that way you only need one aisle to reach all of the servers.

Now, if only they did a version with a hot-tub on the top (heated by the servers)

Shaun

Yes - But.............. 

Very nice, but does it play GTA IV at a decent framerate?

Britt Johnston

how many USB connectors? 

Thumb Up

...would be nice to see a picture of the I/O socket.

Anonymous Coward

Server Blowout? 

Boffin

Wow I know how much a Dell server sucks (at the front) and blows (at the back) would be curios to see what cfm this wall of server fans pushes.. and with the access doors shut what sort of pressure differential exists between the cold and hot sides... loose server blowout problem? Also what sort of pressure 'altitude' are we talking do you need Breating Aperratus to work in the cold side? do the hot side workers need to go through staged decompression?

Anonymous Coward

@Fire the designer... 

Paris Hilton

Back to the drawing board for you... think again

Paris.. because she understands how important rear access is.

wsm

Now... 

IT Angle

every time I see one of those surplus ocean-going cargo containers in a parking lot, I will have to wonder what is really going on inside of it.

Is the supermarket down the street really a front for another cluster of government data processing nodes examining our Internet traffic?

Shane Menshik

Google owns the patent? 

Stop

http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202400961