BLOG on IT/IS in Health Care & Life Sciences Joerg Schwarz on Health Care

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, the Sun health care team in The Netherlands crossed the finish line as the first team to sell a Sun modular data center in the health care space. Flexibility, deployment speed and total cost were convincing arguments for the customer. More background on the features of the Modular Datacenter concept are here.

In this weblog entry we provide a visual documentation of the first installation of a Sun Modular Datacenter for a health care institution, the University Medical Center in Nijmegen, NL. The pictures were taken by Bart Meursing, “our man in Holland”, who thankfully provided them for this Blog.

Since the Sun Modular Datacenter comes in a standard shipping container, regular container handling equipment such as the truck on the picture can be used to move it around.

 

The blackbox is actually white

The project was originally called "Projekt Blackbox”, and in fact the demo models are still painted black. We got some cool, artsy posters of black containers in places like metropolitan New York or San Francisco. In reality, though, black is not a good exterior color because sunlight would heat up the container interior more (as less energy is reflected and thus transformed into heat). Heat is not good for computing, and one feature of the Sun Modular Datacenter is the self sufficient water cooling with impressive environmental specifications. So the actual "blackbox" parked in front of our EBC and shipped to customers is white. I'm not sure if that was the only reason for the re-branding into "Sun Modular Datacenter", but indeed the blackbox is white.

Update: the white "Blackbox" in front of the EBC has been replaced by a black one that carries Sun logos. Just in case you drive by and wonder if I'm color blind ;-)

Location preparation

Normally, hospitals need to plan a data center expansion long time (two or three years) in advance, and it usually requires a lot of time, effort, money and coordination between different departments to build a state-of-the-art data center building.  With Sun’s Modular Datacenter, things are completely different.

The site preparation requires merely a level foundation and container receptacles, and of course water, power and network connections. This can be planned and implemented in several months versus several years.

The receptacles are important to keep the container steady, and given that the exterior is internationally standardized, those receptacles are commodity-off-the-shelf (COTS). Not even on our price list (I think) 

Preventing theft of the entire datacenter with a padlock? Physical access control is actually not a laughing matter, but required in order to be compliant with HIPAA (in the U.S.) and similar laws elsewhere. The modular datacenter itself has actually several locked gates and alarms - again, details to be found on the Sun Modular Datacenter webpage. But here is indeed a standard issue padlock securing an entire data center.

And so, after just a few hours of maneuvering the container onto the receptacles, a new datacenter is finished. Let me quote Steve Jobs and ask you "isn't this amazing"?