An OpenStack Cloud in the Parking Lot

mdc-parkinglot-web

You may see all manner of vehicles as you search for a parking spot when you arrive at work in the morning. But you may not expect to encounter a cloud. At Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, the company has used space in one of its parking lots of house a Dell Modular Data Center (MDC), which will house Dell's OpenStack-powered cloud computing platform and Apache Hadoop solutions for customers to test-drive. It's an interesting example of how modular units can allow companies to use available space on corporate camouses to expand their IT operations. Barton George has more details and photos at Barton's Blog.