Project Blackbox

17.October.2006 - After today, you'll never look at an ordinary shipping container quite the same way again. Project Blackbox is a prototype of the world's first virtualized datacenter--built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies.

Designed to address the needs of customers who are running out of space, power and cooling, Project Blackbox gives customers a glimpse into the fast, cost-effective datacenter deployments coming in the near future--where thinking out of the box means putting an IT infrastructure in a box.

"Just about every CIO and startup I meet says they're crippled by datacenter energy and space constraints -- today's solutions are clearly failing to meet the needs of Web 2.0," said Jonathan Schwartz,CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. "Rather than trying to improve upon today's datacenter, designed for people babysitting computers, Project Blackbox starts from the world's most broadly adopted industry standard, the shipping container, and asks -- how can we most efficiently create modular, lights-out datacenters from this base? The answer...with one-hundredth of the initial cost, one-fifth the cost per square foot and with 20 percent more power efficiency, we can deliver an immense multiple of capacity and capability -- anywhere on earth."

A Novel Datacenter Concept

Project Blackbox packages compute, storage, and network infrastructure capabilities into scalable, modular units outfitted with state-of-the-art cooling, monitoring, and power distribution systems. Customers will be able to order a variety of standard and custom configurations of systems, storage, networking, and software. Housed in a standard 20-foot shipping container for maximum flexibility, Project Blackbox will be easily transported using common shipping methods. Simple hookups for water, AC power, and networking will enable customers to quickly deploy Project Blackbox upon delivery.

Headed toward productization in mid-2007, Project Blackbox engineers the cost, complexity, and rigidity out of legacy datacenters. By applying Sun's trademark innovation to the constraints of the traditional datacenter, Project Blackbox delivers four unique advantages:

• An "instant-on" and rapid deployment advantage
• Breakthrough economics from scalability, use of standard components, cooling innovation, and lower cost to build
• A 100 percent virtualized infrastructure that lets customers build once, deploy anywhere
• The convenience and flexibility of deploying a virtualized datacenter when and where needed

Project Blackbox started with Sun's CTO Greg Papadopoulos and Danny Hillis, a member of Sun's Technical Advisory Board and cofounder of Applied Minds, Inc.

"When everyone was racing to build the smallest rackmount servers, we asked a contrarian question: 'What is the biggest computer we could build?' We realized the answer had better not be bigger than a shipping container if we wanted to transport it easily," Papadopoulos explained. "This turned into Project Blackbox, which includes unique design features to optimize efficiency and performance. Five patents are currently pending on the general system and installed rack designs, various aspects of the highly efficient cooling systems, and the environmental monitoring system. We are very exicted about it."

Trailblazing Advancements

Project Blackbox's innovative design will offer businesses unparalleled speed, flexibility, and economics in deploying IT resources anywhere at any time.

The modular nature of Project Blackbox will allow customers to tap its benefits in an endless variety of deployment environments. Some possible future scenarios could include the following:

• A large Web 2.0 company struggling to keep pace with growth could rapidly build a datacenter and place it next to an inexpensive, green energy source.
• A New York firm could place a container in a New Jersey warehouse, on a rooftop, or in a parking garage where space is more abundant or less expensive. This would allow a company to increase datacenter capacity without having to undertake the cost and complexity of building a new class-A facility.
• Global relief organizations could leverage Project Blackbox's easy management and support for up to 10,000 simultaneous desktop users to bring computing to remote villages and quickly mobilize IT systems to support relief efforts.
• Governments worldwide could move data and applications close to field operations and away from terrorists or disasters quickly and confidently by taking advantage of Project Blackbox's powerful, ruggedized design.
• An oil company could bring high-performance computing to offshore oil rigs for on-site seismic modeling in the ocean or onto supertankers to simulate fluid load.

Inside Project Blackbox

The Project Blackbox prototype is a computing powerhouse capable of hosting a configuration that would place it among the top 200 fastest supercomputers globally. The current prototype could support the following capacities:

• A single Project Blackbox could accommodate 250 Sun Fire T1000 servers with the CoolThreads technology with 2000 cores and 8000 simultaneous threads.
• A single Project Blackbox could accommodate 250 x64-based servers with 1000 cores.
• A single Project Blackbox could provide as much as 1.5 petabytes of disk storage or 2 petabytes of energy-efficient tape storage.
• A single Project Blackbox could provide 7 terabytes of memory.
• A single Project Blackbox could handle up to 10,000 simultaneous desktop users.
• A single Project Blackbox currently has sufficient power and cooling to support 200 kilowatts of rackmounted equipment.

The highly innovative Project Blackbox design also maximizes energy efficiencies and reduces electronic waste:

• Project Blackbox will give customers the flexibility to move applications to optimal locations to take advantage of lower energy rates, avoid power outages, and tap cheaper, greener energy.
• Customers who select a configuration with the Sun Fire CoolThreads technology-based servers will save about $1,000 a year per Sun Fire T2000 or Sun Fire T1000 server in energy costs, in addition to cost savings provided by the container's cooling advantage over existing datacenter implementations.
• Sun will extend its electronic waste and hazardous material leadership by taking back Project Blackbox containers and their systems for upgrading, reuse, recycling, or responsible disposal.

Sun is ready to take you on a tour of the world's first virtualized datacenter. To learn even more about the breakthrough innovation and benefits Project Blackbox will soon deliver, please visit sun.com/blackbox or contact Sun.