Microsoft is continuing to make significant investments in Datacenter technology and is focused on solving issues such as long lead times, significant up-front costs and over capacity. Enter the world of modular Datacenters and ITPACs – IT Pre-Assembled Components. In simple terms – air handling and IT units which are pre-assembled (looking somewhat like a container) and then installed on concrete bases. Each unit can hold  between 400 and 2500 servers (which means many more virtual machines depending on your density)

Kevin Timmons’, manager of the datacenter operations team, just posted a great post digging into the detail One Small Step for Microsoft’s Cloud, Another Big Step for Sustainability which includes a short video on how we build one of these ITPACs.

You might also want to check out this video from the PDC: