[LINK] Active Power, HP Team on Powered Containers

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

<brd>
These things are all the rage.

But I see they are being marketed as flexible, temporary, short term 
solutions.
</brd>


Active Power, HP Team on Powered Containers
February 11th, 2009
Rich Miller
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/02/11/active-power-hp-team-on-powered-containers/

HP will begin offering containerized power and cooling infrastructure 
from Active Power, Inc. (ACPW) with its POD data center container, 
giving customers the ability to rapidly expand both their computing and 
power capacity, the companies said today.

HP’s Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) packs up to 3,500 processors 
into a 40-foot shipping container, offering the computing equivalent of 
about 4,000 feet of data center space. Active Power’s PowerHouse 
packages the company’s flywheel UPS system with a backup generator, 
chiller and switchgear in a 40-foot container.

“The combination of Active Power’s PowerHouse solution and the HP POD 
enables customers to add data center capacity as they need it, and 
deploy much faster than with traditional brick-and-mortar construction,” 
said Steve Cumings, director of Infrastructure for HP’s Scalable 
Computing and Infrastructure Group.

Companies running short of data center capacity are considering these 
“data center in a box” products as a way to expand their IT operations 
until they can build or lease new data centers. The credit crunch has 
intensified the focus on short-term capacity solutions.

“Organizations are expressing more and more interest in highly flexible 
and energy efficient turnkey IT solutions due to the extended time and 
high costs required to build or even update and expand existing data 
centers,” said Nik Simpson, senior analyst, Data Center Strategies, 
Burton Group. “Customers want OEMs and infrastructure providers who can 
help them rapidly expand data center capacity in support of IT and 
business growth, but also balance capital expenditures and operating 
expenses.”

Active Power specializes in uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems 
using flywheels. A flywheel is a spinning cylinder that generates power 
from kinetic energy, continuing to spin when grid power is interrupted. 
See our video demonstration of how a flywheel works).

In most data centers, the UPS system draws power from a large bank of 
batteries to provide “ride-through” electricity to keep servers online 
until the diesel generator can start up and begin powering the facility. 
One of the selling points of flywheels is that they offer a similar 
level of backup power in a much smaller space, which is particularly 
important in containerized systems, where space is at a premium.

Active Power has deployed about 18 megawatts of UPS capacity in the 
PowerHouse configuration to customers including European retailer Tesco 
PLC. The company is also working with Sun Microsystems to sell 
PowerHouse solutions to support Sun’s container, the Sun Modular 
Datacenter S20. Other vendors offering data center container solutions 
include Rackable (RACK), IBM and Verari Systems.

Dell hasn’t publicly announced its container product, but is building 
double-decker data center containers for customers, with one 40-foot 
container filled with servers and storage and another packed with power 
and cooling equipment.

The HP POD can support very dense server configurations of up to 27 
kilowatts of power per rack (see our video tour of the POD for more 
details). Customers can choose between PODs requiring 450 kilowatts of 
energy, or a fully-loaded 600-kilowatt version. A standard PowerHouse 
will support the 450 kilowatt POD, but Active Power has versions that 
will accommodate the maximum POD density as well, according to Martin 
Olsen, director of product management for Active Power.

HP says it can deliver a POD container in as little as six weeks. 
Delivery time is more complicated with power equipment, as strong demand 
for diesel backup generators has meant lengthy delays for some larger 
models. The backlogs, which at one time were more than a year for a 2 
megawatt generator, have eased somewhat. But supply chain issues place a 
premium on vendor relationships.

“For our solution, speed of deployment comes down to generator 
availability,” said Olsen. “Fortunately, we have strong relationships 
with Caterpillar and Cummins, so it’s usually not a bottleneck.”

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au