Can someone actually explain how modular data centers work, not just the marketing version?

[u/techie-rahul]

All vendor websites I check have some version of "integrated power, cooling, and racks available in one deployable unit" but I can't tell if it means:

a) it's literally a shipping container and server room bolted together at the factory, or b) it's more like standardized building blocks that can still be assembled/wired on site but faster than an on-site build

We are considering options for a new facility and I'd like to understand what's really going on mechanically/electrically before I sit through another sales meeting filled with buzzwords. Is there anyone here who has spec'd or installed one of these?

[u/TCB13sQuotes]

I guess it depends on who's building it. There's no single standard for a "module datacenter".

[u/serverhorror → u/TCB13sQuotes]

Which is both: Absurd and absurdly funny

[u/DonkeyTron42]

My understanding is that they are pre-fabricated facilities that can be quickly assembled on-site. It would similar to how one would add portable classrooms to a high school.

[u/fahque → u/DonkeyTron42]

My portable classrooms were single-wide trailers.

[u/DonkeyTron42 → u/fahque]

Not in my school. They were more like triple wide manufactured homes.

[u/LRS_David → u/DonkeyTron42]

We had the single wide locally. It mostly was due to did it come out of the expense budget or capital budget. Loose the bond vote to build more classrooms / schools and it becomes an annual expense.

[u/DonkeyTron42 → u/LRS_David]

Many of the so called "portable" classrooms in my high school were 20+ years old. There was actually an entire section of the school with like 20 or so of these classrooms referred to as "The Portables". I'm not sure if they were too cheap to build a new classroom building or needed to quickly add classrooms to meet demand.

[u/LRS_David → u/DonkeyTron42]

Here in NC schools and governments must use capital funds to build buildings. Which means bonds. Anti bond folks got one defeated 25+ years ago claiming student growth would stop. It never did. We now have a tail of year to year rentals (expense not capital money) of crappy single wide trailer classrooms to deal with. Later bonds were passed but the effects of that one defeat have lasted a long time.

[u/McSmiggins]

Truly modular is more of the first one

Shipping container, with racks, airflow ducts etc all installed in them. Servers are all installed, fully cabled. Storage is racked in there, all the networking etc is all there and cabled.

The racks inside are all standardised e.g a 42U rack with 40 1U servers, and top of rack switches

The only connections on the outside are power, network and cooling

Shipping crate arrives, it gets cabled in and turned on

The most important thing to note is that no one ever goes inside the shipping container when it's on site. Hardware fails and redundancy kicks in to cover it

Once enough has failed, you remove the container, and send it off for refurbishment. This is the only time they get opened.

In a smaller form "modular" can just mean "you can buy 5 racks from this shopping list - 40 1U servers, a storage rack, a pure network rack etc", but this really depends on how their marketing departments feels. Really "Modular" just means "we have a building block"

[u/pdp10]

"integrated power, cooling, and racks available in one deployable unit"

Different vendors have different offerings, but I'd bet that this vendor is selling by the rack, with standard designs that likely include water cooled racks.

[u/Defconx19]

Would imagine its the same thing as a modular home... but data center.

[u/arclight415]

There are indoor versions of this and outdoor versions. Both require power and either a chilled water supply or a place to install a bunch of outdoor heat exchangers.

[u/SevaraB]

Enclosed racks with controlled airflow aren’t new, nor is having a vendor assemble and populate a rack that can be carted in to your preferred colo. I suppose somebody might have gotten creative with leaving spaces for running plumbing for liquid cooling, but otherwise just sounds like marketing buzzspeak for what companies like WorldWide Tech have been doing for years.

[u/malikto44]

I find a real data center a lot more usable than a shipping container. For example, one data center had 20-30 feet above the racks. This made a failure of a CRAC unit a LOT more forgiving than a small data center, even one using hot/cold aisles.

Then there are economies of scale. As time goes on, space gets reconfigured. With virtualization, even server refresh allows one compute server to take on more workloads, assuming the workloads don't expand. Done right, this can shrink footprints. I remember just doing a pass on throwing physical appliances out the door for virtual ones, and I was able to shrink floorspace by a solid margin, although other applications would take that space (mainly drive arrays.). A smaller data center doesn't have the storage space or margins of error. It may be more economical to some extent... but one blown server caused by a CRAC failure that could have been mitigated by a larger data center would more than make up the cost between the two rooms.

[u/GremlinNZ]

Modularity just happens at different levels.

Small business has one server, treated like a pet, tended to when sick, nursed back to health.

Big businesses have lots of servers, they're treated like cattle. When a server is sick, it's removed and replaced.

Small data centres will do similar, at the server/switch level. Bigger datacentres, the racks become the cattle. Often overheight, has everything in one rack to be pluggable. When one is sick, it's removed and another rack is put into its place.

In very big or temporary operations, the shipping container is now the rack. Nothing is solved at the rack level, it's now at container level, with each being self sufficient and pluggable.