Floating Data Centers

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From the What-Did-You-Say? chronicles.  A Bay Area startup has announced that is has plans to begin building a series of data centers on cargo container ships.  The company, known as International Data Security [IDS], is planning on building out fifty data centers on de-commissioned cargo ships.  Twenty-two of which will live in and around North America.

The first “floating data center” will be housed at Pier 50 in San Francisco beginning this April with several anchor [no pun intended] clients already on the books.  Typical data center environments will be developed in space below-deck while above-deck space will be filled using container-based data centers like those from Sun and Rackable.  Plans are in place to use biodiesel to power the ship’s generators and heat from the data center equipment to manage onboard temperature, thus reducing their reliance upon grid power.

A quick look at the IDS executive profiles reveals that their President, Richard Naughton, is a former Navy admiral and superintendent of the Naval Academy.  Guess he never lost his sea legs.

I suppose all this gives a new meaning to “Floating License” [bum bum, ching!]

Read the full article here.