HP Ramps Up Containerised Data Centres

Peter Judge,

HP’s new PODs are now for permanent data centres, as well as being extremely energy efficient with a PUE of 1.2

Hewlett-Packard has announced a major increase in its containerised data centre business with the creation of specialised manufacturing facilities to build its so-called “PODs” (Performance Optimised Datacenters) in both Europe and America.

Containerised data centres have been seen as a solution where people need temporary capacity, or in environments where there are no suitable buildings or time to build a permanent data centre. However, HP believes PODs can have wider applications, as they are more energy efficient than most traditional data centres, with a PUE of 1.2, and can be assembled in weeks instead of months, and then shipped to wherever they are required.

Big changes on the way for data centres

“We have 18,000 square meters of factory and can assemble 15,000 servers at the same time,” said Mark Potter, HP’s vice president for industry standard servers, announcing the new POD-Works facility, at an event in Barcelona,

Suggesting that PODs could have wider uses than containers have been proposed for, Potter said: “Seventy percent of the Global 1000 will need significant changes to their data centres in the next few years.”

HP’s PODworks can deliver data centres in as little as six weeks, said Potter.

In a video, HP’s Wade Vincent, known as the PodFather because he invented the idea, compared PODs to Ford’s model T cars. Traditional data centres have had to be handcrafted, but HP can now turn them off a production line, he said.

“Just add power, just add water, just add network,” said Vincent. The POD is classified as IT equipment, not a building, so it does not have to meet a whole set of regulations, but it can be set up indoors or outdoors.

HP’s US facility to build PODs is in Houston, and there is a smaller factory in Erskine in Scotland – the containers meet local needs for power and water distribution, and can be designed very flexibly, said Potter.

Although HP did not say how many PODs it expects to sell, the market could be very large, executives said.

Mimrosoft ordered 22 PODs, with thousands of servers, and these were delivered within nine weeks, according to a Microsoft executive who joined Potter on stage.