A Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) is a type of modular data center designed for portability. PMDCs are typically built into 20, 40, or 53-foot intermodal containers
An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, or a freight container, (or simply "container") is a large metal crate designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different mod ...
(shipping containers). Designed to be weather-resistant and well insulated, PMDCs can be placed in many environments. They can be stored and then deployed when needed to augment traditional data centers or provide backup functionality in the event of a disaster.
Portable Modular Data Centers are often used for edge computing
Edge computing is a distributed computing model that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data. More broadly, it refers to any design that pushes computation physically closer to a user, so as to reduce the Latency (engineer ...
applications such as 4G and 5G broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
cellular network
A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless network, wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-locatio ...
deployments. This is because PMDCs are comparatively easy to deploy and they are able to provide service at a lower latency due to their physical proximity to customers.
Design
A typical Portable Modular Data Center includes a diesel generator for power, servers, and other computing resources, along with cooling units to manage the heat from high-density computing. PMDCs also feature internet connectivity, often through satellite uplinks.See also
* Shipping container architectureReferences
External links
IBM Portable Modular Data Center Homepage
{{IBM IBM server computers Intermodal containers Data centers Modular datacenter