Data Center in a Container v. Data Center in a Box

Just read the article Is Microsoft Boxing Itself into an IT Corner, by Eric Lai in Computerworld (June 8). It is an interesting approach but there might be a better approach if Micsrosoft partners with IBM.

Maybe the time is right for Microsoft to rebuild their relationship with IBM and think about leveraging the zSeries instead of containers of Intel Servers. They could then roll in the "box" rather than "drop it in". This would decrease the amount of dead space which would be required by the cargo craine for maneuvering. They could put the disk drives into boxes as well and attach it to the CPU "box".

There are two approaches to make this a reality ... one is to develop a WINTEL specialty engine with IBM ... the other is to bring out the Linux Server variants that Microsoft MUST have developed as part of a fallback plan. I remeber years ago they had 40,000 ZLinux machine running. I'm sure the were models have surpassed that limit ... kinda makes 2,000 somewhat insignificant. Anyways Ron has a blog which can tell you more about zVM and zLinux.

If you want to further reduce the temperatures in a data center .. build it where the ambient temperature is cold. This doesn't mean to have to move it to the artic circle ... dig a hole ... a deep hole and build the data center there ... or drill into the side of a mountain and build it there. If you built a data center in the ocean .. you might be able to power it via waves ... and let the icy cold depths do the cooling ... now that is Green.