It's very interesting to read experts' and pundits' opinions about this concept, pro and con. Search for blackbox in Google News for lots of articles and blogs. Johnathan Schwartz's blog, as always, is an admirable bit of evangelism: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/.
By the way, Sun's site contains info about the physical details of the units: rack layout, shock absorbers, plumbing, air distribution, dehumidification, etc.
This announcement, along with APC's InfrastruXure HD rack containment modules and a slew of data-center-in-a-box products (Liebert XDF, HP MCS, Sanmina ECObay), suggests that many companies are beginning to see a much denser, modular, rapid-deployment approach as the solution to longer and more expensive data center build outs. I don't believe everyone will choose to build data centers using shipping containers, but it's clear that high-density, modular thinking will have an increasing role in the future of data center design and construction.
This strikes me as a real useful interim solution while companies are building new centers. One thing's for sure: this product has grabbed the attention of data center professionals and IT managers. There are different views on whether or not this is a gamechanger or a niche product, but there's been good discussion here, on our site and particularly on Schwartz's blog.
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RichM Data Center Knowledge
News and analysis for data center professionals
Interesting solution to a very complex problem. The Data Center market is in a very enviable position today due to the economics of high demand and low supply. We have seen prices for Data Center space more than double in some key markets in the past 6 months.
Sun's solution may be a start of a good idea, though it us unknown if the market demand will make it sustainable (we are not sure what their market size estimator entails). First of all, not all regional markets require this type of service. For example, in Southern California there is still plenty of colocation space / power available. And this does raise security concerns that will need to be met on a case-by-case basis.
Where we believe this is a good offering is in the following markets:
>Disaster Recovery market which includes companies who need a warm-site "ready-to-roll" in the case of a disaster.
>A temporary fix for companies in regions where Data Center space is unavailable or extremely cost prohibative (notable Northern California and the North East).
>Companies with rapid growth needs that cannot be met with their existing infrastructures or current vendor base. In these cases this solution could act as a stop-gap or might become a permanent fix on-site.
Overall it is good to see large IT companies continue to innovate with new offerings. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted that for some large companies the internal hurdle rates are now at 15%. This unfortunately inhibits innovative thinking and risk taking. It is good to see SUN take a risk on a project that may not garner a 15% rate of return, but shows that they are working to start something new.
Sun's project blackbox has been interesting to watch over the last several months. I had hoped to see the tour, but unfortunately missed it.
This idea is certainly interesting. I have worked in extremely remote locations such as the north slope in Alaska and projects in Micronesia etc. The idea of have a shippable data center solution has some merit, but seems a very niche market.
Companies on Alaska's north slope for example have some very specific requirements - from efficient use of space and of course environmental impact, not not mention ease of shipping. The idea you can put a complete DC on a barge and deliver it to nearly anywhere and be up and running with minimal additional infrastructure development is very intriguing.
However, there are some additional factors to the deployment of this type of DC. First, there is the fact that the connexes used are not also the power plants - you will need to ship (most likely) two additional shipping containers which are the power plants.
Then you will need to diesel delivered to run these gen shacks. (Usually available in such sites, but adds significant additional cost.)
Finally there is the connectivity issue - in remote locations you only have satellite available and while this may be sufficient for research or industrial areas with relatively low bandwith requirements, attempting to host a whole DC is going to require considerable communications equipment, with commensurate costs.
Of course if deployed in a more developed area where telco services are established and power is provided would greatly reduce these issues - but I see the real value in the more niche markets of remote deployment. The military of course could have similar applications.
In any event it will be interesting to see how this idea evolves in the industry. I do give credit to Sun for launching this, it is great to see innovative thought given expression and at least explored. Good on ya Sun!
This recent Scientific American piece is a nice overview of the technology and development of the Sun Blackbox. The article includes a schematic of the airflow inside, which I hadn't seen before. Looks like a rack must be rolled out into the center aisle to service its equipment.
I got a look at one of these at the Local Sun office when they brought it around. Not a bad idea.
4" connections for water on both sides
power connections on both sides, same for network uplink/pass through points.
8 racks in a 20' ISO Container, though with the extra stuff sun has, it's more like 7.5 racks for equipment plus 1/2 a rack for their hardware (environmental monitoring, etc). The airflow is circular with what amounts to a CRAC between each rack for cooling air before it goes to the next rack. All the racks on one side are nose to tail so to speak and the others are on the other side. The central aisle allows servers to be pulled out and serviced while up and running. Shock absorbers seem nicely done for each rack (basically great bloody coils springs on their sides) and the overall setup is good.
Problems are you probably want it under weather protection, but that's a cheap steel building or some such to keep the raid off of it directly.
a Container with a generator set and another with the chillers would allow a 3 container deployable setup assuming you have power at the destination. Battery backup is the hard part. You'd either have to get a custom 20' ISO genset with battery or waste space in the "black box" for battery backup.
Deployment time would be pretty darn fast though. Less than 3 months and you could conceviably stand up a unit at a local location, test it all out, then close it down, load it up and ship it to a destination to be connected to the power and cooling there on site.
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CNN Internet Technologies
Data Center Manager
Data Centers Change -- Forever
