Google has patented the idea of putting a complete data centre in a shipping container.
The concept is particularly useful when temporary, mobile data centres need to be set up, such as in disaster-recovery situations. The mobile data centres can be transported by truck and quickly assembled and come with power and cooling systems pre-installed.
Google has been experimenting with the concept for the past two years. Its patent, which was granted earlier this week, is for a "modular data centre with modular components suitable for use with rack or shelf-mount computing systems".
The patent is quite general and covers containers that both do, and do not, conform to ISO international standards.
According to the technology columnist, Robert X Cringley, Google first mooted the idea of installing a data centre in a shipping container two years ago, but he points out that the idea is older than that.
In 2003, Bruce Baumgart and Matt Laue wrote an article called Petabyte Box for Internet Archive, that outlined a proposal, with pictures, for a computer system working in a standard container.
But more recently, in May, Sun went on tour with its own hardware in a shipping container, which it used to demonstrate the concept to prospective customers.
Talkback
This idea was used in Disaster Recovery scenarios in the UK in the 80's so allowing for the 20 year gap how has this sudden;y become a patentable new idea?
Good point. Google has laid out a very detailed specification of their, very specific, idea which you can see in the patent (linked in the original story). It does not cover the general principle so much as lay out its idea of what a system in a box should be. Is this enough to sustain a patent? Well, the answer is yes apparently, but it is something I will be looking into during the next few days.
Also, it would be good to hear from anyone who remembers previous incarnations of the idea (a computer, storage, power supply, cooling in one portable unit, such as a standard container). There is much anecdotal information, but is there much substance?
Just be pinged this comment from the guys at analysts <a href="http://www.the451group.com/">The451</a>:
451 analyst Dan Golding has this to say on the computers in a crate patent scrap:
It's worth remembering that Sun made a big deal out of Project Blackbox, which is Sun's half-hearted swipe at solving datacenter cooling and power issues, while selling servers by the truckload (literally).
It's not that the concept is entirely without merit – a fixed configuration of servers in a shipping container allows airflow to be precisely modeled so as to enhance cooling efficiency. It's just that T1R thinks the entire exercise, while 'cool,' is largely a waste of time because it only addresses a niche market, rather than tackling, head-on, the problems of enterprises and hosting providers. In fact, Google, which sees computing and servers as building blocks of its global infrastructure, is probably one of the few firms that could really leverage the concept well.
So, it now looks like Google and Sun will get to fight it out over a largely worthless bit of intellectual property. T1R, in the interest of fairness, proposes a solution: a few black boxes full of servers for Googlers to use their '20% time' on, and we all call it even? Then, maybe Sun can get back to solving server power problems and Google can fix Google Apps, while the black boxes do what they're best at: getting attention.