Late last week we announced that Dell’s Data Center Solutions group had outfitted Bing Maps’ uber-efficient, uber-compact data center (or as Microsoft calls it “microsite”), located in Longmont, Colorado. The facility is a dedicated imagery processing site to support Streetside, Bird’s Eye, aerial and satellite image types provided by Bing Maps. The site’s key components are Dell’s Modular Data Centers and Melanox Infiniband networking.
Brad Clark, Group Program Manager, Bing Maps Imagery Technologies described their goal for the project, “Our goal was to push technological boundaries, to build a cost effective and efficient microsite. We ended-up with a no-frills high-performance microsite to deliver complicated geospatial applications that can in effect ‘quilt’ different pieces of imagery into a cohesive mosaic that everyone can access.”
Keeping things cool
The challenge when building out the Longmont site was to design a modular outdoor solution that was optimized for power, space, network connectivity and workload performance.
The modules that Dell delivered use a unique blend of free-air with evaporative cooling technology, helping to deliver world-class efficiency and a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as low as 1.03.
To watch the whole site being built in time-lapse check this out:
Extra-credit reading
- Press Release: Dell Unveils New Bing Maps Boulder Microsite
- Data Center Knowledge: Dell Modular Data Center Powering Bing Maps