What's Cookin': Data Furnaces
As the world's hunger for more data grows, everything is being upsized. Data Centers are growing, power requirements are multiplying, and some firms feel they're running out of good data center real estate (safe locations with cheap power, mild climates and a talented labor pool). Perhaps researchers at Microsoft and the University of Virginia have an answer to the data center real estate question: Data Furnace Cloud Computing. The plan calls for servers to be shipped to a homeowner and hooked into the home's heating system. Depending on server configuration and climate, the Data Furnace could be used as a primary heat source for some homes. This makes us wonder: how does hands-on support work? Read the full paper here: http://www.usenix.org/events/hotcloud11/tech/final_files/LiuGoraczko.pdf
Comments
I think this is one of those
I think this is one of those ideas that sounds cool and in theory could work, but what company is going to let their data travel to an average Joe's house? How are they going to seal up the data furnace so no one tampers with it? What if the servers go down but the homeowner won't let you in their house to fix them?
Well the data furnace idea's
Well the data furnace idea's whole point is that it is the epitome of cloud computing. It's a completely distributed and redundant network topology. So it doesn't matter if the servers at someone's house go down, there's probably a dozen other locations with the same data that can pick up.
A cute idea, but come on,
A cute idea, but come on, really? First of all, as a homeowner I wouldn't let servers be placed into my home. Secondly, as a data center professional, I wouldn't let my servers be placed into someone's home!
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