A data center that’s pre-designed, needs less than a year for construction, and offers excellent PUE, but isn’t just containerized... sounds revolutionary.  HP’s new offering in the works, the so-called butterfly data center, or Flexible Data Center, could well offer all this. 

Besides its environmental appeal, because it’s so much more economically viable than building an entire new facility from scratch, the Flexible Data Center could add an interesting nuance to the popularity of colocation.  It’s also more longterm than a containerized data center approach - not so cheap, but more customizable and bigger.

For great diagrams and further detail, see the article at the Register.  Suffice to say, the “butterfly” descriptor comes from the physical structure which involves a central portion where staff mainly work, with four 6000 square-foot data center wings grouped around it.  The design does in fact make the whole structure look a little like a butterfly.  Other components make it highly customizable depending on cooling and space requirements specific to physical location.

There’s no raised-floor, water-cooled option with the Flexible Data Center, but the options are flexible to different climates.  Multiples can be put together for more capacity, although they’re not interlockable.  They should be ready for sale in just a few months, and it’ll be interesting to see how they catch on.

Elizabeth English

Image by HaPe Gera under flickr creative commons license

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