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back to article HP sees techies living in a box

HP has revealed its own POD containerised data centre at its Technology Forum in Las Vegas. The POD acronym stands for Performance-Optimised Datacentre and, like several other companies, HP has decided to follow in Sun's Project Blackbox footsteps and build data centres in shipping containers. HP POD HP says it can be …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Geez...

    I hope they won´t repack it in a 27 times larger cardboard box, like their EULAs.

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  2. Lionel Baden 1

    just waiting

    for the story that 5 trucks turned up and nicked 10 of these containers !

    its gonna happen sooner or later

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  3. Tempest 3K
    Coat

    Dave?

    Will HAL be responsible for these PODS, and if so, will Dave be able to get in this time?

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  4. Stephen Gray

    Spiffing idea

    Right up until some barsteward does exactly what Lionel Baden 1 mentions. Other than that its a winner.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good idea

    computers will just get smaller and more insidious, but this is a good stop gap position for that move.

    Computer work best in a climate controlled manner, and rooms are not the best to make that happen, better to build a box.

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  6. Chris Mellor 1

    A year old

    HP first announced its PODs almost a year ago, in June 2008 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/16/hp_pod_data_center/

    The number of included servers has gone up since then but not the number of disk drives. We might think it could be a bit of a solution looking for a problem. Until we get sales figures we won't know.

    Chris.

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  7. Andy Dingley
    Unhappy

    Welcome to the new HP

    That's not a datacenter, that's the new Bristol Labs building.

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  8. peef
    Black Helicopters

    yes but...

    Are they grounded vis-a-vis lightning storms?

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  9. David Jones 3
    Happy

    When they get the size down a bit we'll be able to say....

    ..behold your new overlords.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @ Lionel - hijacking and other high crimes

    Nothing to see here. A 40' container can routinely contain goods valued in excess of the paltry $1.4M cited here. And the DO get nicked on occasion.

    Consider how many Nikons, iPods, <pick your favorite high-end consumer item> you can stuff inside a box 40' X 9' X 8'. Multiply by retail cost.

    I make it to be about $3M for ipods, as a rough guess.

    Company I used to work for had a case where high-value freight being trucked into the US from Mexico (car parts?) was being hijacked. Suspected to be an inside job... somebody was tipping off the bad guys as to which container on which truck had the good stuff.

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  11. jake Silver badge

    Obligatory & @Lionel & @peef

    Does it run Linux?[1]

    Lional, I kind of suspect that the power cables will be strong enough to act as a fairly decent anchor.

    peef, the container is a grounded steel box, and thus a pretty good Faraday cage.

    [1] Well, somebody had to say it! (Yes, I know, it does.)

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  12. Michael 28
    Pirate

    Hmm.. Who would use these?

    http://promotetheprogress.com/blog/googles-sea-based-data-center-patent-highlights-the-narrow-focus-of-the-companys-call-for-patent-reform/1221/

    Redmond to follow......hopefully.

    Arrr!

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  13. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Boffin

    Totally containerised site!

    Just down the road from one of our branch offices there is a "temporary office" that has sprung up for a well-known gas supplier. We watched as they built a two-story corral of Portakabin-type offices, and the other week they craned two containers with AC units and plenty of power cables into the middle, probably their new datacenter. At a guess, I'd say the whole affair has been probably less than half as expensive to build as the concrete and steel monstrosity that is our branch office, and has been assembled in a matter of weeks. Maybe this is the way most non-HQ offices will be going.

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