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Hello Inner Circle readers,
It has been a while since I've discussed the progress at Sun with regard to eco computing, so I thought I'd give an update this month on some of the material progress and events that have taken place since the beginning of the year. We have some very cool innovations to share. As we've said many times, eco is not just about green computing, it's about economical computing.
We have achieved extensive savings within our corporate datacenters by pursuing our focused efforts around eco computing. Specifically, in the last nine months, through consolidation and closure of three datacenters, we've seen some pretty remarkable savings. Here are some of the numbers:
- Reduction of square footage requirements of 79%
- Number of servers reduced by 44%
- CO2 metric tons reduced by over 50%
- Power consumption reduced by nearly 60%
By leveraging the same technologies and ideas about architecture that are highlighted in a Second Life virtual tour video I'm going to share with you, we are continuing to drive our international footprint of datacenters downward. With the type of savings I just described, we are on track to take our global footprint from eight datacenters in fiscal year '08 down to three datacenters by fiscal year '12. For the CIOs, CFOs and accountants out there, you can imagine the significant return to the bottom line of closing five datacenters.
As you'll hear in the video, none of these savings has been achieved through the invention of new technology. We are simply taking off-the-shelf technologies and applying them in unique ways. So while we'll continue our internal push for emerging technologies and innovations in the datacenter, we see this off-the-shelf approach as one of the foundational elements in achieving a more cost-effective IT solution for the company.
In January of this year, Sun unveiled a state-of-the-art, scalable datacenter in Broomfield, Colorado that uses innovative power and cooling technologies to achieve new standards in energy efficiency — much like those found in our Santa Clara, California facility. Sun's Dean Nelson, Sr. Director of Global Lab and Datacenter Design Services and Greg Papadopoulos, CTO and Executive Vice President for R&D, have created a Second Life virtual tour highlighting the pod architecture and design elements found in Sun's newest datacenters in California and Colorado. I highly recommend readers grab a cup of coffee and watch the short 24-minute virtual tour, as a picture really is worth a thousand words when it comes to understanding the new design elements (that eliminate the need for raised floors) as well as innovations in power usage and cooling.
There are a few things I'll call out as especially interesting to watch for in the video. Early in the piece, they talk about some of the high-level metrics achieved such as reducing 1.4 million square feet of datacenter space to 860,000 square feet, and cutting 165,000 square feet of raised floor to less than 700 square feet, thereby cutting $4 million in costs. What we're really talking about is future-proofing the datacenter. The ability to scale power from seven megawatts up to ten megawatts, and the flexibility you get with power distribution units, is unparalleled. Also, the ability to instantly swap out power connectors without the need to schedule downtime is something that really differentiates this architecture from the traditional datacenter
Another fact that stands out for me is the ability to construct new datacenters, or retrofit old ones, without the need for a raised floor which is a very expensive proposition — 1970s thinking really. Slab floors are much easier to construct. And for the real geeks out there, Dean and Greg discuss the overall power usage effectiveness rating that's used to calibrate how energy-efficient a datacenter is. For the Santa Clara datacenter, Dean prescribes a PUE rating of 1.28 as opposed to the industry standard of 2.0. No matter how you slice the data, the PUE rating being the industry-accepted value for energy effectiveness, we're knocking the ball out of the park when it comes to energy efficiency here
And what many people don't understand is that you don't have to start from scratch. You can take an existing datacenter and begin to implement these new solutions at your own speed. There is nothing prohibiting anyone from incorporating the new design elements into one portion of a traditional datacenter and then continuing to build out the architecture by gradually replacing all of the old legacy equipment. This will achieve the same radical savings. Even at the atomic level, merely swapping out legacy servers with the more energy-efficient M-class series from Sun will show a very significant savings at the server level. As you begin to build your servers into pods and all the other elements around them, your savings only grow.
People often tell me, "Wow, I wish I could do that. I don't know where to start." My response is that if you have a problem starting with a pod, why not start with one rack of new servers and look at the performance improvements you get there? Then use that success to convince your staff, financial team or CEO to take the next step, which is to go from a single rack to a pod because the savings are significantly higher. Prove it to yourself first, then move forward.
Enjoy the video of the Second Life virtual tour and drop me a line with any thoughts or comments you may have.
Until next time,
Bob Worrall
CIO, Sun Microsystems
cio@sun.com
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