Tour of HP’s Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD)

[Terry Olaes]

GigaOM took a “tour” of the inside of HP’s containerized datacenter, known as a POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter). Follow the jump for pictures and a short video of the tour with the “POD Boss,” Wade Vinson.

“Tour” isn’t really the right word, since it’s hard to move around inside the 40-foot shipping container filled with racks, but it was pretty sweet to see all that processing power in one place.

 

[Morazl]

That is a bit ridiculous.

 

[Radagast~mod]

These are a great deal though, since you dont need to buy a building. Just drop them in a parking lot, hook up power and networking and you are live.

 

[char507]

Didn't Sun come out with one of these about a year ago?

 

[w1retap]

I saw one of those when I was down in Florida at a data center once. They use them a lot after hurricanes if their data centers get damaged.

 

[Ockie]

Didn't Sun come out with one of these about a year ago?

Yes, Sun was the first to the containerized data center. Microsoft, HP, and Google all quickly followed.

This is a great concept, but really only realistic if you need sheer quantity and power. Google grows monthly by 10,000 servers, so this is an legitimate approach for them and cost savings.

It's also a decent recovery alternative (however, if your business is so critical, you should invest in a disaster recovery site) but it's not really meant to replace typical data centers nor is it to be there for as a parking lot data center... because these things are super expensive.