Once upon a time, Microsoft used to fill its data centers one server at a time. Then it bought them by the rack. Now it's preparing to load up servers by the shipping container.
Starting with a Chicago-area facility due to open later this year, Microsoft will use an approach in which servers arrive at the data center in a sealed container, already networked together and ready to go. The container itself is then hooked up to power, networking, and air conditioning.
"The trucks back 'em in, rack 'em, and stack 'em," Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told CNET News. And the containers remain sealed, Ozzie said. Once a certain number of servers in the container have failed, it will be pulled out and sent back to the manufacturer and a new container loaded in.
It's just one way that Microsoft is trying to cope in a world where it adds roughly 10,000 servers a month.
"You contain your infrastructure but you also contain the heat that's generated from the servers," Arne Josefsberg, Microsoft's general manager of infrastructure, said in an interview this week. "We are working incredibly hard to improve the energy efficiency of our data centers."
Only a couple of years ago, Microsoft was adding capacity one server at a time, adding individual servers to racks and taking a couple of hours to wire in each new server.
"That's way too expensive, way too slow," said Josefsberg.
Microsoft also used to lease much of its space, until it realized that data centers were going to be a very big part of its future as more and more software moved into the cloud. A couple of years back, though, it found itself running tight on capacity and bought two San Francisco Bay Area data centers in which it had been leasing space.
Over the past 18 months, though, Microsoft has been on a buying--and building--spree. The company has opened a data center in Quincy, Wash., and will open the Chicago facility, as well as another in San Antonio, Texas, later this year. A facility is due to open in Dublin, Ireland next year.
Microsoft is close to announcing yet another data center, Josefsberg said. The software maker also has signed a memorandum of understanding to build a data center in Russia.
No more off-the-shelf hardware
Gone are the days in which Microsoft settled for off-the-shelf hardware to fill its server farms. These days, Microsoft is looking for servers designed to its exact needs. It's not just that Microsoft doesn't want servers that have keyboard or USB ports--it wants motherboards that don't even have the added wiring necessary to support those things that it will never use. Such moves eliminate cost, space, and power consumption.
"We are not physically building our servers, but there is very deep engagement (with the computer makers)," Josefsberg said.
Even a 1 percent or 2 percent reduction in power consumption makes a big difference, Josefsberg said. As it is, Microsoft is trying to cram a whole lot of gear into a small space. While server racks at a Web hosting facility might have power densities of 70 watts to 100 watts per square foot, things are packed far more tightly in the containers, which might be consuming in the thousands of watts of power per square foot.
The container approach is easiest to implement on the ground floor of a facility. In Chicago, for example, it will use containers on the first floor and more traditional racks on the second level. But Josefsberg said that, though it poses some logistical challenges, the company is also considering using multiple levels of containers at other sites, including at a Dublin, Ireland data center due to open next year.
