Microsoft Building CDN

Doug Mohney — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:54:24 -0400

Microsoft is investing massive amounts of cash on data center infrastructure (Cue "Darth Vader" theme). The company is building its own CDN and will likely offer managed services to corporations.

Microsoft's corporate VP of global foundation services Debra Chrapaty--dubbed "Mr. Softie's Internet Infrastructure Czar" by Om Malik--hinted MS has some new special sauce innovations to bring to the data center, including optimized server hardware and software tweaks. MS also is going to put in a big data center in Iowa.

Microsoft is spending "liberally" to upgrade its backbone network and scaling "out" its data center infrastructure. While Chrapaty didn't say exactly how much the company was spending, two years ago Microsoft was spending close to $2 billion. Since then, the company has started work on six data centers and is adding servers at a clip of around 10,000 per month. Its current network backbone speed is 100Gbps, but Microsoft plans to take this up to 500Gbps; no details as to how. Malik thinks current Microsoft backbone provider Level 3 will be a big winner; this reporter thinks the carrier may win on bandwidth, but it remains to be seen what impact the MS CDN expansion will have on its own CDN and video distribution services.

Microsoft's CDN network will be 99 nodes on a 100 gigabit per second backbone. Chrapaty likes container data centers; pack a shipping container full of servers, switches, and storage, roll it up to a site, then plug in power and data connectors.

For more:
- GigaOm gets the scoop on Microsoft's Internet infrastructure plans.

Related articles:
AT&T Adds New CDN, Exec to Manage
Crowe: Video 60-70% of Level 3 traffic

Network Backbone

Microsoft Building CDN