Sun's Newest Eco-Efficient Datacenter

Wednesday Feb 25, 2009

Sun has completed its green, energy efficient datacenter in Broomfield, Colorado!

The largest datacenter consolidation project undertaken in Sun's history, the Broomfield facility incorporates the latest in our portfolio of energy-efficient systems and expertise, including breakthroughs in innovative datacenter design, and power and cooling technologies. With this project, we estimate that we'll save more than $1 million in electricity costs and 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year in Broomfield, and that we'll be able to reduce our carbon footprint by 6 percent in the U.S. Sun has also announced the availability of new datacenter efficiency services to help our customers retrofit and build more efficient datacenters like Sun's Broomfield and Santa Clara datacenters. For more information, including photos and a video tour of the new Broomfield datacenter, go to this site.

The new Broomfield datacenter follows similar Sun projects that I've previously mentioned were completed in Blackwater, UK, Santa Clara, CA and Bangalore, India. It builds on designs used in Sun's Santa Clara datacenter and features water savings, chemical reduction, free air cooling and flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS). As in Santa Clara, the Broomfield datacenter is based on Sun's Pod Architecture, which delivers dramatic footprint compression while still providing capacity for future growth.

A full complement of Sun's high-performance, energy-efficient SPARC and x64 servers, Open Storage and tape products and the OpenSolaris Operating System are at the heart of the Broomfield datacenter. Specific products include the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 and M5000 servers, as well as the SunStorageTek SL8500 modular library system, the Sun Fire X4500 storage server and Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems. These systems are part of a major hardware replacement program that led to a 66 percent space compression (saved space = saved $$). In one example, Sun consolidated 63 servers and 30 direct attached storage devices to two Sun servers.

"The Broomfield datacenter showcases revolutionary datacenter design with the latest in modularity, scalability and flexibility to drive incredible efficiencies in cost, electricity and overall carbon savings," said Dave Douglas, Sun's senior vice president of cloud computing and chief sustainability officer. "As a company we've achieved our first 20 percent reduction in electricity usage since 2002, and the Broomfield datacenter is a great step forward in meeting our goal of another 20 percent reduction."

Through its own datacenter consolidation efforts around the world, Sun has achieved 60 percent datacenter square footage compression globally, decreasing the company's datacenter operating expenses by 30 percent in the Bay Area alone during the last two years. In October 2008, Sun announced the reduction of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from U.S. operations by 23 percent, surpassing its goal five years early. The Broomfield datacenter is a major contributing factor in Sun's ability to reach its goal of another 20 percent reduction in GHG emissions. I wonder how many other companies are doing all of this?

Features of the new Sun Broomfield datacenter include:

Greater space efficiency.

A scalable, modular datacenter based on the Sun Pod Architecture led to a 66 percent footprint compression, by reducing 496,000 square feet from the former StorageTek campus in Louisville, CO to 126,000 square feet.

Reduced electrical consumption.

Electrical consumption was reduced by 1 million kWh per month, enough to power 1,000 homes in Colorado.

Reduced raised floor datacenter space.

Raised floor space in the datacenter was reduced from 165,000 square feet to less than 700 square feet, representing a $4M cost avoidance.

Greener, cleaner architecture.

The datacenter includes flywheel UPS that eliminates lead and chemical waste by removing the need for batteries, and a non-chemical water treatment system, saving water and reducing chemical pollution.

Enhanced scalability.

We incorporated 7 MW of capacity that scales up to 40 percent higher without major construction.

Innovative cooling.

The datacenter includes the world's first and largest installation of Liebert advanced XD cooling system with dynamic cooling controls capable of supporting rack loads up to 30kW and a chiller system 24 percent more efficient than ASHRAE standards.

Overall excellence.

The datacenter was recognized with two Ace awards for Project of the Year from the Associated Contractors of Colorado, presented for excellence in design, execution, complexity and environmental application.

Sun's New Datacenter Strategy, Design and Build Out Services

As part of Sun's Datacenter Efficiency Initiative, Sun recently announced its Datacenter Strategy, Design and Build Out services. These service offerings can help customers determine whether to optimize their current datacenters or build new ones, and are based on the same datacenter design methodologies and best practices Sun used in building its own datacenters. The services aim to maximize space utilization, minimize operating costs and accommodate future growth, all critical in today's economy. The new Strategy, Design and Build Out Services complement the existing Sun Eco Services Suite. Complete details on Sun's Datacenter Consulting Services can be found here .

Eco Responsibility at Sun

Sun promotes an actionable path to cut energy bills and reduce IT environmental impact through a three-step approach for assessing, optimizing and virtualizing IT infrastructures. This results in decisive actions that limit computing's impact on the planet and the bottom line of both Sun and its customers. Sun helps enable customers to reduce the GHG emissions and energy consumption of their IT infrastructures with a full portfolio of servers and storage, a complete suite of Eco Services and the Sun Modular Datacenter. Additionally, Sun continues to look for ways to decrease its carbon footprint through programs like OpenEco.org and Sun Open Work practice, Sun's extensive flexible work program and its global datacenter consolidation initiative. All reasons why I'm proud to work at Sun.

For more information on Sun's Eco Responsibility Initiative, visit this site.