Sunday, January 25, 2009

Sun Unveils its Latest Energy-Efficient Datacenter

Sun Microsystems opened its latest energy-efficient datacenter in Broomfield, Colorado. datacenter. The facility incorporates the latest in Sun's portfolio of energy-efficient systems and expertise, including new datacenter design and power and cooling technologies. Sun estimates it will save more than $1 million in electricity costs and 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year in Broomfield, helping the company reduce its carbon footprint by 6 percent in the U.S.


The new Broomfield datacenter follows similar Sun projects completed in Blackwater, UK, Santa Clara, Calif. and Bangalore, India in August 2007.


The Broomfield datacenter is based on Sun's Pod Architecture and energy-efficient SPARC and x64 servers, Open Storage and tape products and the OpenSolaris Operating System. In one example, Sun consolidated 63 servers and 30 direct attached storage devices to two Sun servers.


Features of the new Sun Broomfield datacenter include:

  • Greater space efficiency: A scalable, modular datacenter based on the Sun Pod Architecture led to a 66 percent footprint compression, by reducing 496,000 square feet from the former StorageTek campus in Louisville, Colo. to 126,000 square feet;


  • Reduced electrical consumption: By 1 million kWh per month, enough to power 1,000 homes in Colorado;


  • Reduced raised floor datacenter space: From 165,000 square feet to less than 700 square feet of raised floor datacenter space, representing a $4M cost avoidance;


  • Greener, cleaner architecture: Including flywheel UPS that eliminates lead and chemical waste by removing the need for batteries, and a non-chemical water treatment system, saving water and reducing chemical pollution;


  • Enhanced scalability: Incorporated 7 MW of capacity that scales up to 40 percent higher without major construction;


  • Innovative cooling: The world's first and largest installation of Liebert advanced XD cooling system with dynamic cooling controls capable of supporting rack loads up to 30kW and a chiller system 24 percent more efficient than ASHRAE standards;


Partners in the Broomfield datacenter construction include Winter Street Architects, Inc. and TeamQuest Corporation.


"The Broomfield datacenter showcases revolutionary datacenter design with the latest in modularity, scalability and flexibility to drive incredible efficiencies in cost, electricity and overall carbon savings," said Dave Douglas, senior vice president of cloud computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. "As a company we've achieved our first 20 percent reduction in electricity usage since 2002, and the Broomfield datacenter is a great step forward in meeting our goal of another 20 percent reduction."


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http://www.sun.com/datacenterdesignhttp://www.sun.com/eco