To meet the challenges of space constraint, power consumption and high costs of brick-and-mortar data centres, Hewlett-Packard has come up with a compact mobile data-centre shaped like a container. HP's upcoming data centre in India is expected to house these container units.

The 20-feet container data centre ‘HP POD', which the company claims can be stationed even in a parking lot, promises to provide a scalable, flexible and secure infrastructure.

(A data centre is a centralised facility which houses and maintains infrastructure, such as computers, servers, storage and networking systems, required to run business operations.)

“Floor space is running out for most users today but use of IT is accelerating. Power is also becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to access. Also, there is increasing carbon footprint awareness and a need to be energy efficient. To meet these challenges, container-based data centres are useful and will enable customers to expand their data centre capacity easily and quickly,” said Mr Rajesh Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers, Enterprise Business, HP India.

“Today, traditional data centres are over provisioned with running at only 10 per cent efficiency. The remaining racks are open. But the cooling and power consumption happens for the whole centre, leading to wastage. The container module is more power efficient. It is also scalable – a customer can buy a container and when the transaction volumes increase, he can get more containers.”

The fire- and water-resistant HP Pod comes with in-built computer nodes and racks that can house up to 1,600 servers, including third party equipment. It promises to deliver the equivalent of 2,000 sq ft of data centre space. The shipment time is around 12 weeks.

The company says customers see cost savings of 30-50 per cent, across various parameters such as real estate, construction, power, management and people costs.

HP has already deployed the Pod across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In India, it is targeting service providers, clients with high-performance computing needs, military and defence, government and enterprises looking at data centre expansion.

HP is looking to deploy the Pod at its own data centres globally, including the proposed centre in India, said Mr Dhar.

The rugged Pod has a shelf life of 15-20 years and can be housed anywhere within 4 walls – be it a warehouse or even a parking lot, said Mr Dhar. It is priced at $500,000.

The Pod also comes in a 40-feet module.

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