New horizons in data centers

Data centers on grains of rice

Data centers in Second Life

Data centers in a box, data centers with a fox

Data centers on the moon

Data Centers "in the clouds" ?? ! ;)

We all appreciate your usual sarcasm — but three of your ideas are actually good.

Blimps: great to get solar-power; can move so leaves no-one in a permanent shadow; the latest in optical-connection gives a way to connect them to the ground — but more importantly (it's a classic interview question at Google): it takes less time to have a container-full of hard drives sent by boat to Australia from California then to use a fastest available IP link (and clutter the under-water cable). Therefore: great to update week-old long-tail data around the world.

Shoes: as you've pointed out, power-source and heat-sinks are data-centers issues; the existing leg-powered electricity generators would work wonders with a floor-cooled, blue-tooth accessed mini-computer. You are left with no cellular antenna, a smaller battery and just a screen in your hand.

Canoes: like boat, it's great for both power and cooling — and like blimps, it's great to connect cities (or other data-centers, power-plants, etc.) that tend to be near rivers.

And for the last one. . . Well, data-centers have been figments of many people imagination, yours first and foremost, and became reality thanks to that — so it's not really a future horizon.

Sun's data center in a kangaroo pouch doesn't sound feasible. Too many hops on the network.

“God is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere."
_ Hermes Trimegistus

"The data center is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the data nowhere"
_ Hermenauta

I think what you have soundly proved here is that the abstract concept of a data center is not obvious and therefore is deserving of patent protection. This is an important contribution and I presume a line at the PTO door will happen tomorrow.

-t

This is my first comment after reading your blog for so long. And I actually want to say Thank You. And I really like your articles. They always make me laughing.
And the ideas about data centers are really funny. I really prefers a data center implanted in the desk where I put my computer. As the server of the company that I work in always have some problems, and the data center always clean up all a sudden. That is really troublesome.
In fact, I hope I has not made wrong understanding with the Data Center.
Anyway, thanks a lot.

Actually raises a point about what the future definition of a "data center" will be, at least from a management perspective ... whatever's inside the four physical walls (or ship bulkheads, or tent flaps)? Some logical/abstract combination of processing happening in-house/outside/in the clouds, etc., + data housed in yet other locations? No lines at the PTO just yet, but isn't VMWare's latest "virtual data center OS" a sign of what's coming?

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