subject: New Portable Data Center [print this page] Earlier known as Project Blackbox, Sun MD or Sun Modular Data Center is a portable data center. Its one of its kind portable data center that can be built inside a shipping container or an intermodal container of a standardized size of 20-foot. One time company leaders Sun Microsystems are producing this unique data center. Sun Modular Data Center can house as much as 280 servers which can be fully operated inside of the container. In the locations where building a data center is not possible Sun Modular Data Center plays an important role. Whole data center can be moves along with the shipping container from one location to another. It can be connected to any infrastructure once its full setup is completed. Many surveys concluded that Sun Modular Data Center cost you only 1/100th against the full size data center. Since it is portable and movable it is liked by many organization who either are unable to afford a full data center or are too remote for the services of data center. First of the two customers of Sun MD are Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Raboud University and also the famous Internet Archive. It was first announced as Project Blackbox in October 2006. Official announcement for the Sun Modular Data center was made January 2008. Till the end of the year 2009 Internet Archive announced as that they need a JBOD NAS box with the condition of storing their server in a 40 inch box. Their fantasy was converted by Sun Microsystems as Sun MD. The product was launched in the March 2009. Google is reported to be building same kind of portable data center, in order to stay in the competition. Their work however was postponed due to some patent problem. Their patent problem was only solved in late 2007. This concept of portable data center is quite helpful specially for the small time companies. In the list of June TOP500 Sun MD scored 412 rank.
