Friday October 20, 2006

Being an avid follower of all Google watcher theories and theorists, I immediately recalled Cringely's year old article when Sun announced Project Blackbox on Tuesday. I had been checking Cringely's site to get his reaction and it appeared today: "Sun announces the Google shipping container data center, but will it fly?".

For what it is worth, Cringely likes Sun's approach and he feels confident that Google will be a customer of it although he offers scant evidence. The other very encouraging spin he had was that this product would likely sell into completely new customer bases. Given that Blackbox can be outfitted with Solaris, Linux or Windows (since our Opteron kit is Microsoft Windows certified) the field is absolutely wide open to any type of shop out there.

For those who haven't read the technical details for the Blackbox, it requires 3 connections: data link, electricity and chilled water (to the tune of 60 tons). Since I grew up around the chillers used to cool data centers, I had to poke around and see what options our customers are going to have when they procure water chillers to compliment the Blackboxes.

Here is a Carrier water chiller rated at 600 tons in rental packaging (Enough capacity to provide the cooling for 10 Blackboxes)

It's no coincidence that Carrier chose the very same TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) Container to package their portable chillers that Sun chose for the portable data center. Its the standard around which the transportation industry revolves.

During my childhood, my father would take me with him on emergency repair calls for the cooling systems for some of Silicon Valley's biggest names in computing. The highlight for me was the day we had to work on the cooling for the Cray at Apple. It was one of the models that cooled the chips by immersion in a non-conductive liquid. I specifically recall that my dad was not fond of that system.

I can only hope the Blackbox captures the imagination of a generation the way the Cray captured mine, and that it proves to be more profitable. I can already assure you it will be more popular with the on-call HVAC guys - their entire interface with the Blackbox will be no harder than a water heater, cold water in, hot water out. You ready to come out of retirement Dad? (2006-10-20 14:09:51.0) Permalink Comments [3]