Portable Data Center

December 17, 2009
by
Pravin

Sun MD or Sun Modular Data Center was known as Project Blackbox when it was under its prototype phase. It is an unique portable data center which is built in a intermodal container or shipping container. Standard size of an shipping container is 20-foot. It is marketed by one time company leaders Sun Microsystems. In a Sun MD a data center with as much as 280 servers can be organized quickly. Sun MD is used specially in the locations which are not suitable for another Data Center. With the shipping container whole container can be moved from one location to another. Once deployed this portable data center can be connected to the provided infrastructure. According to many experts setting up an Sun MD costs only 1/100the of the cost which is required for building a whole data center. Because of its movable nature, Sun MD is getting quite famous and making new customers like Radboud University and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and also Internet Archive. First announced in October 2006 as Project Blackbox, later it was officially announced in January 2008. In the ending of the year 2003, Internet Archive wrote that they need an outdoor JBOD NAS box, which should have a capacity to store their todays horoscope current Archive in an 40 inch container. Their implementations of their concept have been realized with the help of Sun Modular Data Center in March 2009. The project of the Blackbox was ranked on the June 2007 TOP500 list at the rank of 412. To compete Sun Microsystems Google is reported to be working on its own shipping container Data center in November 2005. Work was postponed by Google later in 2007 because of some patent problem. Google’s patent system was pressed through the patent system an was only be issued in October 2007. The concept of portable data center is good for the small organizations which can’t afford their own Data Center and instead of building their own data center they can go for Sun MD. Also in remote locations where building data center is not possible, Sun MD can play an important role. To get an clear view of the Portable Data Center go through the below given images:

Cut View of Portable Data Center

Sun MD