California IT vendor SGI has expanded its line of containerized data centers called Ice Cube, adding models that take a wider variety of IT equipment and a second option for cooling.

The company added two models to its Dual Row containers and added an entire new series called Universal. Traditionally, Ice Cube containers only accommodated half-depth equipment racks. Each of the two new Dual Row models (the 20 ft and the 40 ft version) adds the ability for the user to put two standard-depth roll-in cabinets inside to accommodate more heterogeneous equipment.

All four models that make up the new Universal series allow for standard-depth cabinets, with two models taking roll-in and the other two coming with fixed racks. One of the new models has the ability to house the highest compute capacity and another can accommodate the highest storage capacity SGI has ever been able to stuff in a shipping container.

"Our new Universal ICE Cube data centers extend SGI's leadership in modular data center innovation, allowing us to offer our customers greater flexibility in design and deployment," SGI’s SVP of Hardware Engineering Rick Chapek said in a statement. "SGI can now offer targeted ICE Cube configurations across vertical markets that span technical computing, federal government and defense, oil and gas, and Internet, meeting customer specific application and deployment needs."

The Universal container with highest compute capacity is IC4016UP. The 40 ft unit can support up to 46,080 processor cores. It can hold up to 16 fixed 60U racks, with up to 45 kW per rack, cooled by an in-row chilled-water system.

IC4024UD is SGI’s new storage monster, with room to accommodate up to 29.8 petabytes of storage when using 2 terabyte SATA drives. This 40 ft unit takes up to 24 fixed 49U racks at power density of 14.5 kW per rack. It features in-ceiling, chilled-water cooling.

The new Universal IC2008UA is a 20 ft container that takes up to eight roll-in standard-depth cabinets. This model uses an adiabatic cooling technology, which the vendor says is new and uses only one percent of water usually required by water-cooled containers. Adiabatic cooling occurs when temperature of matter changes without any heat exchange taking place.

Finally, the new Universal IC4019UR container is a 40 ft box that holds up to 19 standard-depth roll-in cabinets. It is cooled by a chilled-water, in-ceiling cooling system, creating the standard hot-aisle/cold-aisle environment.

SGI is currently taking orders for the Universal containers and expects to start shipping the product in the third quarter.

The two new Dual Row-series containers (IC2010HY and IC4026HY) are similar to their 20 ft and 40 ft predecessors, different only in their ability to accommodate two standard-depth roll-in cabinets. Besides the roll-ins, the 20 ft IC2010HY has room for up to eight half-depth racks and the 40 ft IC4026 can take up to 24 half-depth racks. The new Dual Row containers are available immediately.