Vapor IO unpacks data center design for the network edge
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Vapor IO introduced a modular data center design that features smaller, rounded data cylinders that can be rapidly configured for operations in metropolitan markets or where compute demand shifts rapidly.
Data center developer Vapor IO has introduced the Vapor Chamber, an innovation in data center design that it says will significantly lower the capital and operating costs of building and running data centers.
The Vapor Chamber has a “hyper collapsed data center design,” a modular design approach that features smaller, rounded data cylinders, about 10 feet in diameter, that addresses the issue of hot aisle / cold aisle containment. It can be rapidly configured for operations in metropolitan and edge markets where compute demand shifts rapidly.
The Vapor Chamber was designed for the Internet-of-Things cloud and for meeting requirements at the network edge, said Vapor CEO Cole Crawford.
“For too long, traditional data center design practices have been a necessary evil due to the poorly integrated nature of the traditional data center, he said.
“When factoring in the complexities of hybrid clouds and edge-based delivery, options grow increasingly scarce and complex,” he added. “ The data center itself and the critical environments supporting the workload are continuously unaware of what exists above them, and conversely the workload today has no knowledge of what sits below the IT equipment it runs on.”
“This becomes progressively more problematic as we move towards the Internet of Everything,” he said.
Crawford told Data Center Knowledge that the Vapor Chamber’s cylindrical format is designed for data centers in urban settings and other areas where physical space is scarce and it can provide compute capacity in a small footprint.
Vapor Chamber cuts the space needed for cooling traditional data centers, Crawford said. The racks are wedge-shaped, forming a cylinder when put together. The design was inspired by Open Compute, Facebook’s open source design project.
“Open Compute aligns perfectly with our philosophy for the future of the co-location world, said Chris Yetman, chief operating officer of Vantage Data Centers. “Floor space planning is a critical component of a proper data center strategy and maximizing that finite resource is the key.
“Complexity at scale will kill the data center,” added Matt Trifiro, senior vice president of marketing at Mesosphere. “In today's world, all applications are becoming highly-available, distributed systems that require operators to orchestrate thousands of containers across a giant pool of resources – managing individual machines no longer works.”
The company calls the Vapor Chamber “the culmination of countless hours of industrial design and engineering” focused on one basic question: “Why are we still spending $5 million to $10 million per megawatt? Let’s collapse the model and offer a simple, repurposable superstructure with security and critical environments built in.”