Arne Josefsberg, Microsoft’s general manager for infrastructure services opened the firm’s Chicago data center this week.

The site, famous for its containerised data center deployments is listed as a 700,000 sq ft facility - see pics and video below.

In his blog, Josefberg said: ‘The first phase of the Chicago data center represents 30 megawatts of critical power. An additional 30 megawatts is pre-positioned for future growth.’

‘One aspect of this data center that I’d like to talk about in some detail here involves our continued focus on environmental best practices. Through the use of pre-manufactured, standard shipping containers, each of which house approximately 1,800 to 2,500 servers (as we’ve noted in previous blogs), we are able to realize greater conservation of energy and deliver new advancements in power efficiency. In addition, the isolated nature of containers enables Microsoft and its vendors to research new approaches around power and cooling alternatives to reduce energy consumption even more in the future.’


Double decker containers at Chicago, see video below

Containers provide further environmental benefits in that they don’t require additional packaging materials or external form factors for the thousands of servers that they house. They also require less cabling and other equipment that all add up to unnecessary waste in traditional data center designs. Containers are also a very efficient way to quickly deploy capacity.


Inside a container

‘Another best practice we are using in Chicago is water-side economization, which enables us to cool the facility without requiring the high levels of electricity typically needed to power large chillers. Environmental sustainability is in Microsoft’s DNA and the Chicago data center serves as a great example,’ said Josefberg.

Microsoft Chicago Data Center Container Bay