[LINK] Greening ICT

[Tom Worthington]

At 09:31 AM 9/02/2009, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> >> A data-centre in a day, securely installed on the roof of buildings
>
>Your comments make sense, Tom. However ... perhaps a skip-size container ...

Yes, see my speculations on data centres in US military containers 
(about 1.3 x 1.1 x 1 m): 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/10/data-centre-in-military-shipping.html>.

>  Imho, all utilities (eg such as IT boxes) should be isolated from 
> humans .. they dont need to be upfront and behind glass & on-show ...

Yes, I suggested to the Chinese government they put their data 
centres in anonymous warehouses, in industrial parks 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/egov2.html>.

They obviously didn't take that advice, as a few years later I had a 
tour of the data centre for the People's Daily newspaper 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/bws/research.html>. It was in a city 
office building. All I would have needed to have done is change the 
front page of their web site to overthrow the Chinese government, as 
whatever is in this newspaper is assumed to be the official party position. ;-)

>... Take your points Tom, but still a data-centre-in-a-box would 
>have many, many advantages.

But the roof would leak.

I did see an interesting concrete prefabricated, ASIO rated, ISO 
shipping container sized box at a railway conference. This was 
designed for track side equipment and looked cyclone proof: 
<http://garard.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=9&Itemid=56>.

ps: For those wondering where I got the figure of Canberra needing 
100 shipping container data centes: An ISO standard 20 foot container 
has an internal floor area of about 13.5 m2 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization#Dimensions_and_payloads>. 
The Gershon Report on Australian Government ICT identified  10,484 m2 
of capacity in large government data centres in Canberra 
<http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/ICT-Review/chapter1.html#a9>. 
So about 1,000 shipping containers would be needed (allowing a bit of 
wasted space). Assuming the new equipment in the containers achieves 
a ten fold improvement, that reduces to 100 containers.

I expect optimization of the applications could achieve a further ten 
fold improvement, but if I said the government's computing would fit 
in 10 containers, no one would believe me. ;-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University