Sun takes radical attempt at making data centers portable

By Leo Magno - INQUIRER.net
SINGAPORE -- The image one sees when asked to think of a data center is that of a sprawling room filled with many cables, computers, storage systems, racks, trays and cooling systems with raised flooring. Sun Microsystems is trying to simplify that by placing all of a data center’s components literally in a box, taking the concept of portable computing to a new level.

Sun’s Project Blackbox is the computer-maker’s attempt at making a data center portable by placing all of its components -- about 15 metric tons of computer equipment -- in a steel cargo container. The container can thus be shipped, airlifted, pulled by a truck and lifted by a crane to locations and environments data centers have never reached before. With Blackbox, Sun has turned a complex data center housed in a fixed room into a computer system in a box that is as self-contained as a laptop, with the goal of being able to take it anywhere.

“Russia was the most extreme environment where we’ve deployed a Blackbox,” said Mark Stanton, Sun Microsystems virtualization architect for the Asia Pacific region. Sun said the Blackbox has an operating range of between minus 29 and plus 54 degrees Celsius, but Stanton said the Russian project took the data center to much colder temperatures.

“In even more extreme conditions we can put anti-freeze into the cooling system and ruggedize the whole box with third-party partners,” Stanton said.

The Russian project was conducted by Mobile Telesystem, the biggest mobile operator in Russia. The company has already deployed one Blackbox and is planning to acquire eight more, according to Sun officials.

The portability of the Blackbox has also attracted companies looking to offer services at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where the data-center-in-a-box can be deployed to and pulled out easily from the site of the games. Bringing one Blackbox to the 2008 Olympics would give data service providers 146 teraflops, 2 petabytes of storage and 7 terabytes of memory in one box. Just drop the box there and then add power, water and network bandwidth.

This sort of portable computing augurs well for chief information officers (CIOs) as companies continue to create big, institutional data centers crammed with hundreds of computers in racks that stretch from floor to ceiling. CIOs are faced with the problem of generating more capacity for these data centers as demand continues to grow in the Internet age. New data centers have to be custom-designed and specially installed, server by server, in a process that takes years and costs millions of dollars. Once operational, the data centers cost a fortune to operate because the computer rooms are carved out of high-rent office space and require massive air-conditioning.

“With Project Blackbox, as you need more capacity, you just add another fully configured, self-contained data center as you go,” said Stanton.

From one perspective, Project Blackbox could be seen as Sun’s attempt at turning grid computing into a tangible, portable product and not jut a concept. Grid computing -- also referred to as utility computing or cloud computing -- is the use of different computer and related resources not necessarily located physically together and making all those resources act as a whole, distributing power, storage and applications throughout the network when needed. Others may say it even goes back to the use of big machines in cold computer rooms, but this time Sun has made the room portable by placing all of the components in a box made from a steel cargo container. From either perspective, one thing is for sure: Sun is redefining the Internet data enter or IDC. From a massive yet sensitive computer service housed in fixed, real estate-hungry locations, IDCs could now, conceptually, be as portable and tough as a ruggedized laptop 5 percent the size of a traditional corporate data center.