Last week we had a visit from the AMD-sponsored HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) at our Austin campus. It’s an impressive solution to a significant problem, but I have to admit that I started to have flashbacks. So before I extol the POD’s virtues, I should give you some background.

I think I first heard the idea of the “data center in a shipping container” in 2006. At the time I was working for the storage team at Sun Microsystems. If my memory serves me, the team asked me to help with the marketing of what was known as Project Blackbox – but as I recall I didn’t do anything so I don’t get any credit (or blame).

After you absorb the simplicity of the idea, most people really got into the concept. If you check then-CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog you can see the marketing messages and the comments. I don’t know who came up with this concept initially but this is where I first heard of it.

What made the idea a good one then remains true. Data centers are expensive, fixed, and inflexible and can take years to build. Moreover, given the high percentage of associated costs that are expended on power and cooling, moving data centers isn’t only a good idea for things like disasters (drop them close to the problem), it’s a great idea to save money. And HP PODs can also be delivered fully tested and configured to customer specifications in as little as 6 weeks via HP Factory Express.

HP Innovation at Work

And today, 5 years later HP is leveraging an increased use of common parts and the lower cost of servers and storage to make the POD an even more efficient solution. 

The HP POD comes in two sizes – a 20 foot and a 40 foot model. So, how many servers can you fit into a 20 foot POD? Well it allows for 500U of rack capacity – so let’s say a lot! But don’t forget that you need to add storage and networking too. The answer to the question ultimately depends on how much power you can supply and how much cooling is needed.

The 40 foot POD, designed for high density IT deployments, supports up to 3,520 server nodes (that’s 6K+ AMD Opteron™ processors!); the 20 foot version supports more than 1,600 CPUs. For you power junkies that’s 27,000W per rack or 700W per square foot.

So what are you going to do with all that power? The case has already been made for “drop in data centers” and I think this is how most people will use them today. Longer term, I think the answer may be a little different.

What Lies Ahead?

I expect what we’ll see longer term is more and more companies deploying fabrics of resources rather than fixed datacenters. Today we might call them grids but we need to think more broadly. I think they will be “plug and play” distributed company resources that self-assemble into self-managed infrastructures.

While people have been talking about these ideas for years, there were always three big problems:

• Computers didn’t talk together effectively;
• Networking was too expensive; and
• Hosting and managing computers has been so expensive IT wanted to keep it close by.

The Internet, IP technology and open standards have addressed the first of these issues. Networking, while still not necessarily cheap, is significantly more available and affordable than even 5 years ago. And with the HP POD, I think we’re well on the way to addressing the last of these concerns.

Now we likely need to add security to the list of issues too. But that’s a complicated question of encryption and distributed databases. A blog for another day, perhaps.

If you think an HP POD might be a good idea for your business, AMD and HP would love to talk to you about it. You can find out more on their website − they say it can be delivered in as little as 6 weeks, depending on the implementation. You can also learn more directly from the “POD Father” – HP’s Wade Vinson – this links to a great video.

Now the only question is what colors does it come in!

Nigel Dessau is Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.