Where Sun Microsystems is offering a modular, scalable datacenter in a standard shipping container, one company is reportedly going beyond the confines of a standard 20-foot container and offering a new concept in datacenter planning and build.
International Data Security (IDS), a San Francisco Bay startup is reportedly intending to build 50 new datacenters around the world, with 22 sited in North America. But rather than have fixed, physical groundings on terra firma, the company will build the datacenters on refurbished decommissioned cargo ships. The ships will remain in port in the designated city with power and network supplied by standard connectivity.
According to Kenneth Jamaca, Silverback Migration Solutions, IDS who he has spoken to, believe this novel approach offers three distinct advantages:
1. They will use sea water for their chill water, reducing/eliminating the energy required to maintain appropriate datacenter temperatures. This allows them to reduce their energy consumption by at approximately 30%.
2. In addition to standard datacenter backup generators, these cargo ships all have standard ship generators that can generate additional power. All generators will have access to the ships fuel storage during disaster scenarios, which allows them to operate for nearly a month without the need to refuel. Most datacenters measure their backup power duration by days and hours before needing to refuel. Also, they can refuel via the water, which will allow them additional access to bio-diesel and less reliance on fuel companies access to surface streets.
3. They are able to quickly provide large scale real estate in some of the most real estate impacted areas of the country. They can outfit a ship and have it docked in San Francisco or New York in only a few months. Each ship reportedly has 200,000 square foot of datacenter space.
Only part of the 200,000 square foot will be made available in April, with the remainder coming around June. The company is working remotely until the first ship goes live in April. That ship will house the initial datacenter space, as well as the corporate headquarters for IDS. The first few ships in San Francisco will be moored at Pier 50.