Sun Microsystems has launched Project Blackbox, a mobile virtualized datacenter which it hails as a “first ever” concept to deliver all the power and capacity of traditional datacenters but at greater efficiency and reduced complexity, cost and time to deployment.
Unveiling the new solution as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations in Singapore on Tuesday, Sun said that Project Blackbox is aimed at four key markets—Augmentation, Interim Use, Specialized and Large Scale Introduction Services.
Cheryl Martin, Senior Director of Business Development for Sun Microsystems told journalists that Sun embarked on Project Blackbox as an answer to the many concerns its customers had voiced out such as dealing with space constraints, a need for rapid time to deployment, easing the pain of building new data centres and the need to lower power consumption and cost.
The 20 ft. container is integrated with high-efficiency power and cooling up to 25 KW per rack. It is compatible with both Sun and third party gear, can be deployed in 1/10 the time taken versus traditional data centres and is suitable for temperatures between -29 degrees and 54 degrees.
According to a recent Gartner report, “By 2008, 50 percent of current data centers will have insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high-density equipment.”
Sun believes that the eco computing aspect of Project Blackbox--which when compared to a traditional 10,000 sq. ft datacenter, offers three times more compute power at 20 percent-40 percent more efficient cooling and power-- will allow businesses to confront such future obstacles and reduce the energy consumption of their computing environment.
“The environmental and economic impact of increasing power and cooling in the datacenter is a major concern that is not unique to different sets of customers from different parts of the world…Project Blackbox ushers a new era computing where customers can expect a fully contained datacenter that offers scalability, efficiency and reliability in a socially responsible fashion,” said Gan Boon San, Chief of Operations, Asia South, Managing Director, Malaysia and PIROAS, Sun Microsystems.
“The time to reduce our impact on the environment is now, what’s good for business is good for the environment.”
Although the prototype literally resembles a black box in colour, Sun said that the consecutive units that were built are white. Currently 12 black boxes have been built and cost approximately USD 750, 000 each.
Sun, which will be unveiling this “datacenter in a box” to key customers, partners and businesses in the local information and communications technology today said that it will officially launch the solution on November 20th, first in the UK and US and then Asia.
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