SGI embraces standardized data center containers
Its universal models will allow for the use of standard racks, accommodating a much wider range of server and storage equipment
SGI is making some big changes to its Ice Cube family of containerized data centers, adding new models that will be able to house standard server racks for the first time.
Its new universal containers, due in the third quarter, will be able to accommodate all of SGI's server and storage gear, including its Altix UV scale-up and Altix Ice scale-out supercomputers. Until now its containers have been designed primarily for SGI's proprietary, half-depth rackable servers.
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Because the new containers will use standard racks, customers will also have the option to use server equipment from other vendors. That brings SGI's strategy in line with those of IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and the other big container vendors. Sun Microsystems was also in the containers game, but it's unclear if Oracle will continue to sell those products. Oracle has declined repeated requests to comment on its plans for containers, and most of the links on its Web page for Sun's containers lead to a general-purpose customer support page.
None of the vendors wants to sell a container filled with third-party gear -- it wouldn't make business sense. But they give customers the option to reuse some existing third-party equipment alongside their own. "If customers want to deploy some existing racks in a container alongside SGI equipment, that's the sort of flexibility we want to provide," said Geoffrey Noer, senior director of product marketing at SGI.
SGI, under its former name of Rackable Systems, helped pioneer the market for containerized data centers, which cram the essential parts of a data center into customized 20- or 40-foot shipping containers. Rackable acquired bankrupt HPC vendor Silicon Graphics last year and changed the combined company's name to SGI.
Other vendors have since leapt into the containers market, and SGI became the odd man out by not supporting standard racks. That wasn't a problem when its containers were aimed at Internet giants like Microsoft and Yahoo, who were willing to get on board with Rackable's nonstandard but very dense and energy-efficient half-depth servers.
But SGI now hopes to expand its container business into the HPC sector, including government labs, oil and gas companies, the military, and companies that design complex products like aircraft and automobiles. Those markets want the option to use its Altix systems, and possibly gear from other vendors too.
