Friday Apr 18, 2008
The Uptime Institute has a whitepaper called "New Product Review: Self-Contained Computer Room in a Shipping Container from Sun Microsystems". You can find a link to this whitepaper at: http://uptimeinstitute.org/wp_pdf/(TUI3023)SunModularDataCenterOp_weblock.pdf
It talks about the design, their review, and the efficiency of the design.
Thursday Jan 31, 2008
The Sun Modular Datacenter S20 configured with Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 servers demonstrated superior performance/watt and performance/space compared to Dell servers using Xeon quad-core processors.
The Sun Modular Datacenter S20 fully configured with the 102 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120, each with a single UltraSPARC T2, can deliver nearly 455,000 web processing operations/second.
- The Sun Modular Datacenter S20 fully configured with the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 systems only requires 160 square feet of space. By comparison, a configuration of Dell servers with 2.66GHz Xeon 5355 in 160
square feet of traditional datacenter space constrained to 150 Watts/square
foot would achieve only about 57,500 web processing operations/second. To
achieve the same level of performance with the Dell configuration in a
traditional datacenter, over 1250 square feet would be needed.
-
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120s configured in a Sun Modular
Datacenter S20 are very efficient in terms of space-performance. A Sun Modular
Datacenter S20 fully-configured with Dell servers with 2.66GHz Xeon 5355 would only be able to provide about 1/3 of the web processing
performance of a Sun Modular Datacenter fully-configured with Sun SPARC
Enterprise T5120 servers with UltraSPARC T2.
-
A Sun Modular Datacenter S20 provides 2840 web-processing-ops/sec/sq-ft vs. a
traditional datacenter of Dell servers which provides only 365 web
processing-ops/sec/sq-ft.
-
The Sun Modular Datacenter S20 is very efficient at cooling. Using the same
Sun hardware, the Sun Modular Datacenter S20 is 40% more efficient. This
translates into a savings of 1459 metric tons over 5 years.
Notes:
Due to Sun Modular Datacenter's integrated, high-efficiency power and cooling
of up to 25kW per rack, servers, disks and switches can be racked more densely
than a traditional datacenter.
Many traditional datacenters are constrained to 150 Watts/square foot, this
was used in the above estimates.
BM Seeer: I'll be adding more of the background numbers and calculations when I can find a public version of them, if you are a customer contact Sun and I'm sure you can get versions before I can post them.
Benchmark Description
Web processing performance is based on internal analysis of web
processing workloads. The workloads simulates multiple user web
sessions accessing a web server via static and dynamic HTTP (contains
both HTTP and HTTPS transactions) and is reported as web operations
per second.
System Configuration & Results
| Results |
455,000 web ops/sec |
| Reference Date: |
January 29, 2008 |
| System: |
1 x Sun Modular Datcenter S20 |
| Servers: |
102 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 |
| Total Number Processors: |
102 chips / 816 cores (8 threads/core) |
| Processor/GHz Server: |
Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4 GHz, 64GB |
| Operating System: |
Solaris 10
|
| Software: |
Sun JSWS 7.0 Update 2
|
Storage & Network
- 6 x Sun StorageTek 3510 (Dual-raid controller)
- 51 x Sun StorageTek 3510 (JBOD)
- 9 x Brocade Silkworm 4100 switches
- 5 x Cisco Catalyst 6509 NEBs Switches
Tuesday Jan 29, 2008
Many Sun blogs talking about Sun Modular Datacenter S20 announcement. What I find very interesting
is that the efficiency of cooling is more than 40% better than a traditional data centre. On
http://www.sun.com/products/sunmd/s20/features.jsp#anchor5 it says:
Thanks to its unique closed-loop water cooling system, the Sun MD is more than 40% more energy efficient at cooling than a typical datacenter. With high efficiency water cooling in a small enclosed area, much less energy is consumed per compute unit than in an air-conditioned datacenter. Energy costs can be reduced even more by locating the unit near less expensive power sources.
I don't know if anyone has done the math, but I'd also be interested the following scenario:
If your business is experiencing bustling growth in it's operations, and you needed to create
a 1000 sq foot data centre, in a traditional sense. But all you had was a well-preped room.
How many shipping containers would one need to ship all of the supporting environment (raised floors), cabling infrastructure, security/monitoring, racks, CRACs, boxes for each server(let's say HP BladeSystem C-Class -see page 2), etc. to create that data centre? Then compare that to some number of Sun Modular Datacenter S20's filled with the Sun Fire T5120 to the same level of performance. Having seen all of the gear that goes into just creating a data centre, that would be an interesting comparison.
Wednesday Jul 25, 2007
Article in SLAC today about project blackbox and how quickly they add computing
power with this Sun innovation:
http://today.slac.stanford.edu/feature/2007/blackbox2.asp
Wednesday Jul 18, 2007
Scientific American covers Sun Project Blackbox in August 2007. Online Article.
In this article David Patterson talked about "...putting blackboxes closer to
inexpensive or environmentally friendly sources of electricity, like a hydroelectric
dam or a wind turbine."
But maybe even a better economic advantage would be putting it closer to both
cheap power and cold water...
See this article from the Economist about Cold water "Hydrothermal cooling is a novel approach that uses cold water from
lakes and oceans to run air-conditioning systems"
Then remember my blog entry about real work on deploying Windmills on de-commissioned oil rigs.
Reminds me that I once read about water near the base of oil rigs in southern
California being at 7C. You wouldn't need the 5KM of pipes that Toronto is building.
What about oil rigs at other locations?
So would a big datacenter be best constructed by having lots of Sun's blackboxes on
some platform in the ocean using water drawn from the bottom to cool it and power
from the wind to only power computation and some pumps for cooling?
...maybe a slight redesign for the North Sea windmills needs to be looked at 
http://www.hydro.com/en/press_room/news/archive/2005_11/hywind_en.html.
That water is kinda chilly...
Monday Jul 09, 2007
Blackbox: More thoughts as they start rolling out...
http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200900832
Tuesday Jun 05, 2007
A podcast of Scientific American, covers container history. It is an
interview with Professor Arthur Donovan who wrote a book about cargo
containerization.
Go to: http://www.sciam.com/podcast/
Look for May 30, 2007: Science Talk "How Cargo Containers Shrank the World and Transformed Trade"
Important 2006 Anniversaries
50th Anniversary of container ship voyage
50th Anniversary of federal interstate highway act
Announcement of Sun's "Project Blackbox" (datacenter container)
Will Sun's Project Blackbox create a "common culture of the datacenter."
...or are we still going to waste money with customized datacenters that
all basically look alike?
Tuesday Apr 24, 2007
I saw this being passed around internally and thought more of you might
be intereseted:
Project Blackbox information sources on the web:
Sun.com:
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox
Discover Sun Tour:
http://www.sun.com/events/st/index.jsp
The "Where is Project Blackbox?" blog:
http://blogs.sun.com/blackbox/
3 D Interactive tour/video:
http://frsun.downloads.edgesuite.net/sun/07C00868/
Youtube Video Tour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp3QxlSK9Kc
Technology Evangelist Video Tour:
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/03/sun_microsystems_pro.html
Friday Feb 16, 2007
Other's thoughts on Sun's Blackbox. Ideas International has a blog. Yesterday,
they added their thoughts on Blackbox. You can read it at:
http://ideasint.blogs.com/ideasinsights/2007/02/suns_blackbox_b.html
I'm also one of those who thinks this starts at 5000 and grows from there. I still
think it is not only about rapid deploy but may change how we design all modern
datacenters.
Here is another blog about the Project Blackbox that is now on tour.
http://lopsa.org/node/1146
I kinda liked this line:
"...it's real and physical. You can touch it, hear it, move it, and ... as the Sun guy said, taste it if you like. (Personally, I wouldn't, I don't know where that datacenter has been)."
Tuesday Feb 06, 2007
The Blackbox is going on the road, if you want to see one in person go to the official sun site http://www.sun.com/events/st/
People who are interested in these locations can register online, just
click on the "Register Now" buttons on the Locations and Registration to get
the full tour.
This has also been blogged about at the great Blackbox blog at:
http://blogs.sun.com/blackbox/entry/tour_schedule_and_official_web
Tuesday Feb 06, 2007
Here is a cool article about mounting "conventional windmills on decommissioned oil platforms" in Wired magazine:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/wind.html
Ok they've got step 1, what about putting a datacenter made of
Sun Blackboxes on them and using power & cooling at the source? see last year's blog entry...
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/low_impact_datacenters
Thursday Jan 25, 2007
Federal Computer Week (FCW) has an article about Blackbox.
You can read it at:
http://www.fcw.com/article97459-01-24-07-Web
Friday Oct 27, 2006
...I had a wild dream last night. An oil company had a huge seismic datacenter on a decommissioned oil rig. They a wind turbines on it for power
(and a couple around it). They either used some kind of seawater to closed-cycle fresh water to cool everything (or pumped the hot water down
a hundred feet to a radiator of sorts to cool it), it the only power they
used for cooling was the pumps. Containers all over it to build the
Blackbox datacenter, Blackboxes for storage, containers for UPS, etc.
...what wild ideas do you have?
Thursday Oct 26, 2006
Brainstorming more about Sun's Blackbox, what are some creative disaster recovery
scenarios for Blackbox. There are containers on double-stack railroad cars, is this how they should done for rapid disaster
recovery. Just load up a railroad car with Blackbox compute & storage containers, add in a chiller, some generator and fuel cars, etc.
What do the oil/gas people need to do seismic processing in the field?
What kind of riverboats can hold containers of the same type of config?
Barges?
Icebreakers?
I'll look in the comments for some of your wild ideas...
I know that something like 95% of all cargo moves in container ships but what other kinds of intermodal transportation might make you rethink how future datacenters are designed?
Fun facts
There are enough containers to build a 8-foot-high wall twice around the equator!
So you may be thinking why should we look at these wild ideas. Well if you wanted to
have some Blackboxes stacked on a railroad car, could you get to the power and water port, etc. So could one run it when it is parked and still stacked? I always think wild ideas
are worth thinking about...
Thursday Oct 26, 2006
Let your imagination run wild.... 8 racks: any mix of Sun's servers, storage,
tape, etc. plus any mix of network gear and other. Enough cooling for 200kW (25kW per rack). What would you put in a Sun Blackbox?
Several places Sun has talked about 7 racks of computing and one for networking, but what are your thoughts what your most imaginative mix of stuff in 8 racks?
- Webservering?
- Supercomputer?
- Database plus SAP Application Tier?
- Database engine plus Java Application Tier?
- ...etc
or what would you put in multiple containers?
Post your ideas in comments...
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I'm just curious - why 3510 and not 2540?
that's a good question, I don't know the answ...
Perhaps there wasn't enough power for the 2540 - p...
Numbers were based on actual results, even the pow...
That seems to be a URL for results on a T5220...
Yes, the URL lists the bigger more configurable T5...
That "inflated power estimate" was ...