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Sun's Project Blackbox
This is more of an "offload" than a "download," but it's still a neat idea. Sun this week announced what they think is the future of data-centers: Project Blackbox. The basic idea is pretty simple. Instead of building data-centers in existing buildings, customers will be able to order prefab centers built into storage containers and delivered to a location of their choice pre-built and ready to plug in. A company could even put a Blackbox in in a "rack" at a specially designed col-lo facility, or use it as a remote command center. Think of it as PODS for IT. Sun claims that a single Blackbox could hold 250 Sun Fire T1000 boxes with a total of 2000 cores running 8000 simultaneous threads. Pretty impressive, although the storage figures seem a little low.
No word on when Sun will start actually producing the units, if ever, but it's an interesting idea. I'd like to know what the water hook-up is for, though; I'd don't see anyone pulling one of these into the local RV park with a straight face.
[via Tao of Mac]
Edit:
It's nice to know I'm not going crazy. As Dan points out in the comments, the 7TB figure is for RAM, the storage capacity is 1.5PB, or 2PB of tape.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentstripperOct 22nd 2006 10:29AM
consider the exponential raise of the heat-up power that comes along with size increasment...
DanOct 22nd 2006 10:54AM
If you look closely, you'll see that the Blackbox comes with 7TB of RAM. The actual storage space is around 2 petabytes - presumably, more in line with what you expected?
AkeoOct 23rd 2006 9:17AM
maybe the water hook-up is for the cooling, cant imagine how they'd cool it otherwise.
guygerOct 22nd 2006 7:44PM
$500k for seven racks and I would guesstimate 70kw worth of power(two 208v 30amp circuits per rack)? If you read Equinix's SEC filings you will see that they spend approx $25k per rack to build their sites and in some cases that includes the cost of the Real Estate. To be clear, EQIX builds at approx 4kw per rack so you would need about 15 racks to achieve the same power density and that would cost $375k which is much less than the purported $500k for this container. This box product is such a niche offering that if Sun throws too much effort towards it they will be cutting Jonathan's ponytail off and using it to lock the door of one of these boxes while he is inside.
Does Sun think you are just going to park this in a garage and plug it in? There is no such thing as a 100kw receptacle. 10-15% greater efficiency on cooling? News flash people..that is nothing to get excited about. Sun could save us all much more than that if they and others designed the HARDWARE and SOFTWARE to be more efficient and let the datacenter people deal with HVAC efficiency. On top of that, when was the last time you worked with a company that had a finite growth trajectory? This product inherently has finite attributes. What happens when you fill up the seven racks? You just send them a $500k PO and back up another container in the parking lot? What happens when/if you need to downsize? Put the stupid thing on ebay? Jonathan has really lost it...perhaps he never had it becuase if this is the best he can come up with Sun is fucked.
PunchyOct 22nd 2006 9:35PM
Talk about jumping the shark. Really sad actually, we owe Sun so much for the innovation they have cranked out over the years. Now they're just an antiquated remenant of their former selves, selling scale up and scale out bits and bytes and grasping desperately at straws that are unfortunatley all short.
Sun ditch the SPARC chip, make Solaris completely opensource for every platform and sell some identity management software to yourselves because you are in need of one.
Me thinks it won't be long before Sun goes the way of SGI simply because they couldn't see the forest for the trees.
Hope someone wakes up tommorrow and realizes how stupid this piece of marketing trype really is.
Tsk, tsk...
Punchy
jimmykOct 23rd 2006 4:14AM
More info on the origins (and point - for guyger) of this product:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20061020.html
EleventeenOct 23rd 2006 2:01PM
Water is probably for the A/C units. Either that or for code-required fire supression systems.