Portable Data Centers May Save Energy, Money

rom the outside they look like ordinary, beat up cargo trailers sitting on the back lot.

But Giovanni Coglitore of Rackable Systems said the trailers contained, “$3 million worth of the most cutting edge servers you can buy on the planet.”

The Silicon Valley company thinks is the future of the Internet. It’s a data center-to-go. A portable, yet powerful set of network servers packed into a 40-foot trailer.
This could enable Internet companies to beat the rising costs of real estate, cut energy use and still stream your online music and movies all at the same time.

“There’s not enough data center space in the United States or worldwide,” said Tom Barton, the CEO of Rackable Systems. “And the cost of building data centers is very high on the up front costs, as well as operating them.”

If you Yahoo, use YouTube or send photos online, then you are part of a growing traffic jam on the web. Increasing the need for data centers and servers, which store and serve all that information.

The sale of a building in Milpitas is making news headlines partly because it will cost about $28 million to develop as a new data center, making it more expensive to house servers than people.

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