Sun Microsystems has developed a modular datacentre,
designed to simplify the installation of datacentre
facilities.
Dubbed Project Blackbox, the datacentre is pre-installed in
modular shipping containers, providing computing, storage and
network infrastructure, along with power and cooling out of the
box. Application areas include the military, developing countries
and oil exploration situations where IT needs to be quickly
established using limited network and electrical
infrastructure.
Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive and president at Sun said,
"Rather than trying to improve upon today's datacentre, Project
Blackbox starts from the world's most broadly adopted industry
standard, the shipping container."
Sun's aim has been to provide an efficient, modular,
cost-effective datacentre design that would offer 20% greater power
efficiency than existing installations. Schwartz said, "We can
deliver an immense multiple of capacity and capability - anywhere
on earth."
The Blackbox runs Solaris 10 and Sun's virtualisation
technology. It can hold 250 Sun Fire servers, provide 2Pbytes of
storage, or 7Tbytes of memory.
Gartner analyst Michael Bell noted that the more significant
potential benefit of Sun's Blackbox is installation speed.
"Traditional datacenters require months to design, engineer and
construct. The Sun unit could be shipped and installed in a few
days."
He warned that the equipment would weigh about 10 tons when
fully loaded with computers, so floor loading may be a constraint.
Another factor is scalability.
Bell said, "Our biggest concern with the Sun unit is
scalability, since customers wanting to add more capacity to a
full-capacity unit would have to do so in storage container-sized
increments."
Gartner recommended users assess Blackbox against the cost of
using outsourced facilities and alternatives like APC's modular,
integrated Infrastruxure products.
Blackbox is currently in the late prototype phase. It is
expected to be commercially available mid-2007.
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