IBM, Sun, SGI Deliver Data Center Portability

The ICE Cube containerized data center from SGI—formerly Rackable Systems—can be shipped in 20- or 40-foot containers and can hold up to 2,800 servers and 22,400 cores. For storage deployments, the mobile data center can offer up to 7.1 petabytes of storage.

The Sun MD S20 offers eight industry-standard 19-inch racks, with a capacity for 1,120 CPUs or 3 petabytes of disk. It is aimed at education customers and emerging markets. The Sun MD D20 has deeper racks that enable users to use more mission-critical equipment, such as the Sun SPARC Enterprsie M4000 and M5000 servers, StorageTek SL5000 Modular Library and StorageTek 9985V system. The photo is of a Sun MD S20 installed at the Soda Building on the UC Berkeley campus.

HP’s POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter) container has the capacity for 3,520 compute nodes, delivers the equivalent of 4,000 square feet of traditional data center space and is 50 percent more energy-efficient than typical data center buildouts, company officials say. It uses standard 19-inch racks and can support both HP hardware and systems from other vendors.

IBM’s PMDC (Portable Modular Data Center) can be shipped in 20-foot or 40-foot containers and is part of IBM’s larger Project Big Green green IT initiative. IBM’s PMDC uses 30 percent less power than traditional data centers and, like HP’s POD, can support IBM equipment and systems from other vendors.

Verari System’s FOREST (Flexible, Open, Reliable, Energy efficient, Scalable and Transportable) containerized data center can house more than 2,880 servers in a standard 40-foot container. The FOREST can run either Verari blade systems or traditional servers, and can improve data center efficiency by up to 110 percent, according to company officials.