Sun visits Rackable's Ice Cube, leaves Green with Envy

At Uptime Institute Conference, Rackable Systems has their Ice Cube Container parked in the parking lot open for all to visit. While talking to the Rackable staff, it became clear how brilliant they were to have their container easily accessible.  Their traffic has been high, because they are open during the whole conference vs, the few hours the exhibit area is. This means they are open the whole conference to potential customer's visits with their undivided attention with no competing traffic. Rackable staff says this is one of their best shows for interest in containers from qualified customers.

While I was in the Rackable container, Mark Monroe, Sun's Director of Sustainable Computing visited the container to get a little tour. I asked the Rackable guys how the conversation went. They joked, "he left green with envy."

It's funny, and he may have.  I am blogging from the session on modular "containerized" computer room concepts with Sun, Rackable, Intel, and Verari participating in a panel discussion.  There is lively engagement discussing the issues of using containers. The IBM and Dell guys were in the audience as well.

What is interesting to hear is all the different scenarios where people are thinking containers make sense for data center deployments.

One particular interesting piece of data is Verari Systems said the Microsoft Container Data Center deployed in Boulder, CO is operating at a PUE of 1.3, and should be expected to go to 1.2.

Comments

[Mark Beverley]

Awsome product,saw it at the Uptime Institute symposium today. The best cooling design I have seen. Way ahead of the rest. Catering for other manufactureres equipment can be a challenge though.

[Mark Monroe, Sun Microsystems]

Dave, it was 95F in the box when we were in there (Rackable brought power, but not a chiller to the show). I was green around the gills, ready to pass out from working in the hot aisle. :-)

Seriously, it was great of Rackable to bring Ice Cube to the Symposium, and wish we could have had our box there too for the side-by-side comparison. Unfortunately, our US tour box was tied up at Cleveland Stadium. Here's the site that catalogs the current tour with photos and blog: http://blogs.sun.com/blackbox/. Or check out the photos from the tour here: http://pmonday.smugmug.com/gallery/4281010_8W9GF#P-14-16

If you want to see the Sun MD 20 (widely known as Project Blackbox), go to http://www.sun.com/events/st/loc.jsp for a listing of the 24 sites in the US and Europe that will have the Sun MD 20 between now and the end of June 2008. You should go, the truck that carries the Sun MD 20 and it's chiller/generator is INCREDIBLE!

mark.

[Simon Rohrich]

There is an even smaller scale and more robust system out there. It will drive through doors, and up ramps. One person can deploy a datacenterwww.youtube.com/ellipticalmobile