Sun's Blackbox

Get your mind out of the gutter, I'm referring to their portable datacenter. I was able to attend one of Sun's introductory briefings today in Menlo Park. When Jonathan Schwartz first announced this as a product I was very skeptical and threatened. Skeptical because these containers are 160 sq ft and can support a 200kw draw. That is 1250 watts per foot, albeit very isolated. And threatened because of the potential disruptive effect these new devices could have on the traditional datacenter market, my livelihood. Kinda.

I'm still skeptical but not as much as I was. I'm definitely not threatened, not because I don't believe in the viability but because the two are more complimentary than exclusive.

There are a few kinks to be worked out or how shall I say, items that are quickly set aside during their presentations but what did you expect? Marketing, marketing. Anyone know Al Hops?

Anyway back to this Blackbox.... A couple issues to note:

- these are NOT stand alone units. they require:


- multiple high voltage power connections in a minimum n+1 config - approx 250kw of provisioned primary power(these aren't connections you just run an extension cord f or. these are serious high voltage connections and as such require a serious infrastructure plant to get the connections down to the voltage required by the box. you don't call PG&E up and order one of these. typically this will be a branch on a larger power grid and in the datacenter world can be likened to a 12kv branch to a PDU.

- Cold water - Blackbox units require a cold water feed to support cooling off the payload, if you will. . To support 200kw of draw is approx 30 tons of chiller for these Blackboxes. The chiller doesn't come with the Blackbox and doesn't fit on or in one. Infact, a 60 ton chiller, enough capacity for 3 boxes, is about the size of a box itself. Chillers require power to produce cold water and you don't just plug a chiller into your wall outlet and be on your way. It requires the same or similar type of connections as the Blackbox, hi voltage, hi capacity circuits.

- Water Supply - HVAC systems will lose water to condensation, evaporation, leaks, overflows, etc and that water needs to be made back up to ensure smooth sailing. Maintaining N+1 design, you need two supplies of water from seperate suppliers. One is obviously your regular water supply but what about the second? dig a well like most datacenters do?

- UPS systems. There aren't any. Seriously. So that should tell me who the target customer is. Someone who doesn't care about uptime? The why the hell buy all this crap? why not host it on Amazon S3 or MediaTemple? Who doesn't care about uptime? Google is the only company I can think of, actually amazon too, who wouldn't care if they lost 8 racks of servers. I just don't think Sun is far enough along to have a solution for UPS that doesn't make you take a step back and say, 'wait a second, where the hell am i going to park five* tractor trailers so i can operate my 24 racks?' * 3 actual Blackbox container, 1 container for Generator and batteries and one container for the chiller.

I sound like I'm bagging on Sun but I'm not really. I like the idea and know it's a definite winner in niche applications such as military use, natural disaster use, isolated locations where it can be airlifted in and so on.

The thing is, if Sun owned the entire market for those specific applications it still isn't going to get Sun where it needs to be, it's just too limited in size. Sun needs to find a way to make these Boxes the defacto standard choice when a company begins evaluating datacenter options. That or sell the concept to the colo vendors by delivering them value by showing that the Boxes can compete economically with a standard raised floor environment. Coincidentally, just like a regular datacenter, in order to support a few of these boxes you will need a significant MEP resource which is essentially the bread and butter of a datacenter and datacenter operators are experts are managing MEP. Its a nice fit.

I liken the potential of Blackbox type architecture to what consumers are using Amazon S3 grid or google's own infrastructure(googleOS) for, a shared IT resource that supports unique data for each user and leverages commonalities among users. everything is virtually connected and resources are shared so if one goes down it doesnt matter yet the performance benefits of close proximity is omnipresent.

Cost. The fully built out container(without the computers, chiller, generator and truck or helicopter to transport it) currently costs $500k to build. Sun eluded to the price point of $250k as one which they're shooting for. $250k for 200kw isn't a bad deal. Equinix spends about $25k per rack or $1000/sq ft for a 2.5kw rack. In gross #'s Suns Box looks good at $1200/kw on the Box while a traditional datacenter, per Equinix's rough costs, comes in at $10,000 per kw. I don't know what the cost of the chiller plant and elctrical switches, etc would be but imagine it can't be more than 60% of the total costs of construction of the traditional so add another $6000 per kw and mutiply that sum, $7200, by the number of kw draw and you get your total cost for the Box and the supporting MEP gear. In this case it is $1.4MM for 200kw of datacenter equivalent. For Equinix, it would cost $2MM+

Lots of potential with this product but in order to be mass adopted it needs to demonstrate an economic benefit in addition to the obvious operational ones.

The Facebook Marathon

Robert Young wrote an interesting post on Gigaom asking the question whether Facebook missed the boat or is here to stay.

One thing that is crystal clear is that the guys at Facebook are just getting started. The recent video deal with Comcast, the upcoming gift shop, the jobster deal and probably a boat load more on the way. Last time I was in Palo Alto I wondered what was up with the line of people stretching out from facebook to hiway 280 and back was all about, now I know, it was all the BD guys from the F10000 waiting to do deals :) (joke). The Facebook niche is as much college aged adults as was googles niche the technorati. They did both start there though. Facebook is and will continue to do deals, real deals, with name brand, established companies who all want so badly to market to the Facebook users.

Robert and some of his readers bring up some interesting issues that these advertisers appear to be experiencing via their placements in Facebook. It seems they aren't getting the results they want or thought they would. SHOCKER. Could it be that this population doesn't have the disposable income they thought, are more fickle than anticipated, have no patience, are multitasking while online, or just don't buy stuff online?

Perhaps, but doubtful. I believe the problem is these advertisers haven't qualified the audience they are marketing to and developed a strategy to assuage the fact that these people know that if it talks like a rabbit, hops like a rabbit, &^$%s like a rabbit and eats carrots night and day then chances are it is a rabbit. The rabbit in this case is their marketing efforts. These advertisers also spend ad dollars on network television and rely upon Nielsen ratings to tell them whteher or not they spent their money well. Yet in the online world they experience low immediate purchases and they question the value as it relates to where they spend their ad dollars. That makes perfect sense in a vacuum environment like television or radio or print where you literally have no idea how or who is watching what. Is Nielsen selling beachfront property on the Texas gulf too?

When an industry like advertising can get lazy and assume what worked in the past will work in the future, their clients will experience a relative decline in the utility of a dollar spent on advertising. In this case, the agencys are developing campaigns and buyin inventory from facebook and placing their campaigns in the inventory and when an ad is served, it's served and that's it. It's just served. Why is that? facebook users have grown up on the internet, know about spam, pop ups, phishing, dos, ddos, etc and just as the generation before them became immune to direct mailings that came via USPS delivery person, this generation is immune to the lame ads being served today. If these advertisers want to really see value in their advertising spends they will need to make some major adjustments including adopting a long term, not short term strategy.

Short term is like a one night stand and nobody likes being screwed. They like to get laid which implies a mutually pleasing relationship. Success based advertising is short term and there is certainly a place for it among these users but it's definitely not coming from a mainstream company like CocaCola or McDonalds. It's coming from the guy across campus who just posted a msg saying he has KGB for sale for $40 an eigth. Brand establishment, brand placement and brand alignment are the long term approach advertisers will need to take if they aren't selling drugs or sex. It shouldn't be a surprise, they've been thinking they were doing this all along with the other three networks(TV, Print, Radio). We're seeing product placement in films so and some TV programming and we will soon see it online too. Conde Naste and Reddit is an example of this alignment and that combination will be a winner because they are bridging that gap that the advertiser can't and the Madison Ave marketing agency sees this new wave of strategy marketing as a threat to their business model of selling airtime, eyeballs, ears, clickthroughs, etc they are disincented to adopt it now, when the opportunity is in front of them. Like anything else, advertising strategies and associated successes are cyclical and have a finite timeframe and always have some association with the culture of the time. Therefore, as time moves on so should your thoughts on marketing.

Facebook wasn't stupid for choosing to remain independent, they 'get' it and are quite clueful. It is a marathon, not a sprint and steady progress will allow facebook to cross the finish line. If we're in mile 8 right now, facebook, google, salesforce, ebay, amazon, and yahoo are all still very much contenders who will likely find romance amongst them, it just may not be what we thought it would or when we thought it would happen.