It’s a cool time to be doing research related to datacenter-scale computing, what with all the neat new stuff being tried out. Microsoft is experimenting with a datacenter in a tent, Google’s talking about offshore floating datacenters (datahavens?), Intel has demonstrated a datacenter cooled almost entirely by ambient air rather than conventional A/C, saving up to 74% in energy costs. (Here’s a good article on the first with pointers to the other two). The “tent datacenter” survived drips from the tent, a windstorm that blew a section of fencing into the rack, and a leaf getting pulled against a server’s fan grating. Looks like this is just the beginning of datacenter innovation, and once again we’re seeing that (despite the Bush administration’s best efforts to convince us of the contrary) there are potentially huge savings to be had in “greening” the datacenter. I’ve started subscribing to DatacenterKnowledge.com’s RSS feed to stay informed…