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Sun To Unveil Project Blackbox
this great guy writes "A year ago, Google's secret plans for a portable data center in a shipping container were being revealed by Robert X. Cringely. Sun Microsystems is about to officially unveil its 'data center in a box' concept. Project Blackbox will involve the full-scale production of data centers in 20-foot-long cargo shipping containers." From the article: "The idea eliminates several major hurdles facing data center customers: finding an appropriate site, arranging the servers and cooling mechanisms in the most efficient manner, and waiting for construction to be complete. The company is touting energy efficiency as a crucial benefit of the confined space, as its patented cooling features can more accurately target hot spots than in giant warehouses. The box can hold hundreds of servers and save thousands of dollars per year in energy costs, the company said."
Not too long ago my employer went from hosting the datacenter on-site to co-locating @ HP's data center in Colorado Springs.
It seems to me that Blackbox would be a boon for companies like HP. Companies can start with whatever IT infrastructure they need, be it a Blackbox or some organic collection of UNIX and Wintel stuff. When they've grown to the point that in-house IT infrastructure management costs more than it's worth*, HP trucks in a Blackbox. The client company moves data and does a test switchover. Then the HP Blackbox gets moved to the local datacenter and the real switchover occurs.
*There are days when I question if IT infrastructure management ever costs more than it's worth, but it's at least useful to recognize the reality that some CxO will draw that line in the sand...