On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.
It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.
"I think, I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think this could be the largest data center in the world," said Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services for Microsoft's data center operations.
The center has 30 megawatts of capacity.
The software maker also won't say exactly which services are running in each facility, but the many Bing posters inside the upstairs server rooms in Chicago offer a pretty good indication of what is going on there.
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