Project Blackbox

Project Blackbox: The Facts

What is it:
Project Blackbox, the world's first virtualized datacentre, applies Sun's trademark innovation, network computing infrastructure and HPC expertise to engineer out complexity and reset datacentre economics by putting a datacentre in a standard 20' shipping container. The first customer ship of Project Blackbox is expected to be July 2007, with early access systems available now to qualified customers.

What it can do:
Project Blackbox will enable a build once, rapidly deployable, secure, modular datacentre that provides the convenience and flexibility of a datacentre where you want it, when you want it.

Why it is interesting:
Whether you are out of space, growing rapidly, need “instant-on” IT infrastructure that can be quickly deployed anywhere worldwide, or want to access alternative energy sources, traditional datacentres may no longer be the fastest, most cost effective or efficient way to add IT capacity. The many unique design features in Project Blackbox -- including ability to pack racks tighter than possible in a traditional datacentre, shock absorption for easy transport, and integrating and centralizing state-of-the-art cooling, networking and power distribution -- optimize energy, space and performance efficiency. The result is instant-on expansion and deployment opportunities for customers achieve maximum cost savings and operational flexibility.

Who is it for:
Project Blackbox is intended for customers who want a fully configured IT environment for everything from quickly expanding capacity, to datacentre consolidation and migrations, to field deployments and disaster recovery, as well as co-location in areas with low-cost power sources and large scale network service deployments (e.g., social networking, online auctions).

What can go inside:
The extreme power and cooling efficiencies of Project Blackbox will enable a compute density up to 1250W per square foot available at a fraction of the cost and time it would take to deploy a traditional, high-power, density datacentre. Project Blackbox maximizes this capability using standard racks, systems, storage, networking, power and cooling to provide an extremely powerful compute and storage platform on a very small footprint.

One Project Blackbox could hold 120 Sun Fire™ CoolThreads™ T2000 servers.

One Project Blackbox can hold 250 Sun Fire CoolThreads T1000 servers with 2000 cores; 8,000 simultaneous threads

250 CoolThreads servers support 4x the web users & have 5x the efficiency of a Project Blackbox of Dell Xeon servers.

One Project Blackbox could provide as much as 1.5 petabytes of disk storage.

One Project Blackbox could provide nearly 1 petabyte of energy-efficient tape storage.

One Project Blackbox could hold 250 x64 servers with 1,000 cores. One Project Blackbox could manage and support up to 10,000 simultaneous  desktop users - without administrators.

One Project Blackbox could host a configuration that would put it among the top 200 fastest supercomputers globally.

One Project Blackbox could provide 7 Terabytes of Memory.

One Project Blackbox will have sufficient power and cooling to support 200kW of rack mounted equipment.

What Makes it Unique:
Deployable in 1/10th the time it takes to design, build and deploy a traditional datacentre.

A fully configured (and configurable) virtualized datacentre housed in a standard 20' shipping container.

Ability to configure mix of servers, storage, software and networking, including Solaris, Sun Fire and x64 systems.

Packs more racks tighter than possible in a traditional datacentre.

3 times the computing power for equivalent space.

Integrated and centralized state-of-the-art cooling, networking and power distribution.

Fans and Water-cooled Heat Exchanger provide in-circuit, energy-efficient water cooling that is 20% more efficient.

Simple external hookup: chilled water, AC power, networking.

Integrated de-humidifier, sensors, alarms, GPS.

Floor and ceiling shock absorption system and Top Lock Pin protect installed servers for easier transport using standard shipping methods.Front and rear doors, central service aisle and slide mechanism for maintenance.

Single end-to-end solution ownership, service and support.

Ability to relocate compute assets near low-power sources to save up to $350,000/year on power costs!

Several patents are pending on Project Blackbox, from the general system and installed rack designs, to various aspects of the highly efficient cooling systems, including its environmental monitoring system that combine to deliver breakthrough economics and energy efficiency.

What Will You Be Able to Do With It:
The possibilities are endless for Project Blackbox. A few scenarios include:

Provides a better alternative for expanding, consolidating and migrating traditional datacentre capacity.

When commercially available:
- An enterprise could have an outbuilding with a dozen containers as part of a campus datacentre consolidation.

- A NYC company can have its datacentre in a NJ warehouse or Manhattan rooftop, where space is more abundant and/or less expensive enabling easy, incremental capacity without expense of new class A datacentre space.

- Oil companies can bring high performance computing to their offshore oil rigs to do on-site seismic modelling (in ocean or desert) supertanker deployments (simulating fluid load).

A very large web or hyper-growth company can rapidly build a datacentre and place it next to inexpensive, green (i.e., cleaner, environmentally-friendly) energy source.

Government: Project Blackbox enables governments to quickly and flexibly move data and applications close to field operations and away from terrorists and disasters worldwide as needed in a powerful, ruggedized environment.

Humanitarian (e.g., emergency response and powering the participation of a village): Project Blackbox provides easy management of and support for up to 10,000 simultaneous Sun Ray desktop users – without administration -- providing the flexibility to quickly mobilize systems and move applications toward relief efforts and remote villages worldwide.

A hosting company could offer "Container Ports", where they provide all of the chilled water, power and networking in a structured warehouse space where companies can move containers in (and out) of these "ports" (picture an RV park).

Integrators can leverage Project Blackbox to build their own, customized Modular computing facilities.

Other partners can develop solutions with the pieces that go around Project Blackbox (e.g., power company with integrated power, satellite uplinks for networking, etc.

Datacentre and Disaster Recovery Outsourcers can leverage Project Blackbox to quickly deploy datacentres.