Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Success at a Glance

Physics research depends on sophisticated instrumentation for conducting cutting-edge experiments, and this instrumentation can cost millions of dollars per year to operate. There are often grants associated with the research, and specific deadlines are tied to the grants. With all of this at stake, researchers often need to add computing resources quickly.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) faced some increasingly common challenges in extending its computing resources. The IT team had a growing number of requests for servers, but couldn’t fill them because its datacenter was packed to the limit. There was no further power and cooling capacity in the building to support more servers, and re-tooling these utilities is costly and time-consuming. A separate project to install a row of water-cooled racks had taken a year to complete, again because of the struggle to bring sufficient power and cooling into the building.

SLAC looked at alternative locations, such as smaller satellite datacenters and even building a completely new facility. While these alternatives would be good long-term solutions, even the quickest expansion would take two to five years to complete, and there are high costs and an inherent unpredictability in construction projects.

This wasn’t an option. BaBar, a high-energy physics experiment, was entering its final year of data acquisition expecting significantly higher data rates. During the past seven years, BaBar has been gathering data from studying the decay of tiny particles called B mesons in order to understand an asymmetry in nature: why more particles than anti-particles were formed in the Big Bang, allowing the universe as we know it to exist. BaBar, as well as other projects, needed computing resources quickly to fulfill its commitments on time.

SLAC realized that Sun Modular Datacenter could provide the computing capacity it needed, while also enabling it to meet its approaching deadline. The lab was intrigued by the solution’s high-density computing form factor that offered flexibility to locate it almost anywhere and to select and configure the servers it needed most. SLAC also liked the small list of site requirements—with standard power, cooling and a network connection, the unit is ready to start processing data. So SLAC placed an order for a Sun Modular Datacenter—an enhanced, standard-size steel shipping container whose “payload” is in this case a customized implementation of 252 Sun Fire X2200 M2 servers installed in 7 racks, plus 1 rack for networking equipment.

The lab chose to configure Sun Modular Datacenter with the Sun Fire X2200 M2 server because that server is already in use at SLAC and provides the performance needed for scientific processing. Through the Sun Customer Ready program, all 252 servers were configured to exact specifications and installed in the racks in Sun Modular Datacenter, complete with all cabling and networking, prior to arrival on-site. Just one month after receiving the order, Sun completed testing, placed Sun Modular Datacenter on a truck and delivered it to SLAC.

“The Sun Customer Ready program saved us several weeks of work,” says Chuck Boeheim, assistant director of computing at SLAC. “Instead of the servers arriving in 500 cartons, which we would have had to deal with, they were pre-installed, configured and tested, ready for power, cooling, and networking.” SLAC has chosen a semi-permanent site for Sun Modular Datacenter that met specific requirements for permanent, heavy-duty power and cooling lines and earthquake safety. It engineered and installed a concrete platform on which to place the metal container and connect the utilities.

With construction complete and approvals in place with the Department of Energy, Sun Modular Datacenter is now powered on, six months after purchase—a fourfold faster deployment than the two-year alternative of constructing a new satellite datacenter. Sun Modular Datacenter supplies an additional 1600 Kilo SPECint 2000s of processing power to the lab (an increase of more than 30 percent over SLAC’s existing computing capacity) in about 160 square feet of space.

The lab purchased a second Sun Modular Datacenter, and anticipates that the second installation will be completed much more quickly with the basic utility infrastructure now in place.

“If a site had the power, cooling, and networking ready for connection,” says Boeheim, “depending on local codes and regulations, Sun Modular Datacenter could be ready for operation within a few days of delivery.”