Containerize your datacenter staff

With the announcement yesterday that datacenter operator Interxion has provided sleeping pods for their engineers so that they can assure on-site services during the upcoming Olympic Games, datacenter containers have taken another step forward.  Now they will be modularizing people.

I have this image of job interviews now containing a few more critical questions for IT staff; adding into the detailed questions about education, certifications, and actual experience will be the very important "how tall are you in your stocking feet?"  and "have you ever exhibited signs of claustrophobia?" After all, if you need to pack your engineers into a six and a half-foot long, four foot diameter, plastic tube, they have to be comfortable in there.

Admittedly, this does address a few issues I've raised in the past about providing for your datacenter staff in the event of emergencies, but should this become a standard practice, it will be important that your datacenter engineers be aware of this packaging issue. And having spent time in many large cities all over the world, I can see how packing yourself into a container to sleep can be a more attractive option than fighting hours' worth of traffic to commute to and from your home.

Perhaps in the near future we will be able to upgrade these accommodations to a science fiction theorized stasis tube. That way, when datacenter problems crop up management can yell ‘Decant me a few more IT guys for the duration!"