I am in LA for Microsoft PDC ‘09. One thing on Day 1 I was happy to see in real, an Azure container that was on display on the exhibition floor. These are containers (shipping container) that have all included in them – Hundreds of Dell Servers, Climate controlled, Networked, Monitoring and so on. When a container arrives at a new Microsoft Data Center location, all they need to do is plug in power and network uplink. Everything else is included in the container box. A typical data centre will have hundreds of these containers.
Windows Azure Container – (from left) Networking, Power inlet
Windows Azure Container