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Sun to set up datacentre in coal mine
Underground facility to preserve power.
By Chris Mellor | Techworld
Published: 06:00 GMT, 16 November 07
Sun and a consortium of other businesses are going to lower Blackbox self-contained computing facilities into a Japanese coal mine to set up an underground datacentre, using up to 50 percent less power than a ground-level datacentre.
The coolant will be ground water and the site's temperature is a constant 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) all year, meaning no air-conditioning will be needed outside the containers. This reduces the energy required for the water chillers, used with surface-level Blackbox containers.
The group estimates that up to $9 million of electricity costs could be saved annually if the centre were to run 30,000 server cores.
Sun is working with eleven other companies, including Internet Initiative Japan - an ISP, BearingPoint, Itochu Techno-Solutions and NS Solutions. They will form a joint venture with Sun. NTT Communications and Chuo University are also involved.
The disused coal mine is located in the Chubu region on Japan's Honshu island. Sun will build 30 Blackbox self-contained datacentres containing a total of 10,000 servers (cores). This can be increased to 30,000 cores if there is the demand for it.
The containers will be lowered 100m into the mine and linked to power, water cooling and network lines via external connectors.
Sun has been developing its Blackbox concept for three years and a typical one has 250 servers mounted in seven racks inside a standard 20-foot shipping container. Sun says that With T-series processors, a single Blackbox can hold up to 2,000 cores, providing 8,000 simultaneous processing threads.
Such a subterranean datacentre will be easier to secure against unauthorised entry and terrorist attacks. The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale. The Nihonkai-Chubu earthquake shook the region in 1983.
The project has been initially costed at $405 million and the site should start offering datacentre services to public and private sector customers in April, 2010.
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s3ltor | Published: 05:12 GMT, 20 November 2007
groud water not renuable? r u kidding me. Where do u think all fresh water in the planet comes from? sea water evaporates, then rains down and flows in rivers/lakes and yes underground tunnels back to the ocean. Sir is there is one thing on this earth that is renuable is water. Furthermore i think is a great idea to save energy and resources and in the long run, the planet. Im sick of hearing people say they dont agree with certain initiatives b/c it doesnt do enogh. Well at least is better than doing nothing at all.
Tom | Published: 20:41 GMT, 18 November 2007
voice of possibilities said Park City, Utah has an old mine tour that you stop and watch a flooded section of the mine... Ground water flowing by. They explain where it is comming from and going to... I fail to see how heating that water as it goes by would be "non-renewable". I agree. What is not good is when clean water is used once - for chilling, industrial processes which could use less water, "automatically" watering grass (e.g. while raining)...and then sent down the drain.
Tom | Published: 02:42 GMT, 18 November 2007
Cool Idea! I assume you will swap in/out containers for upgrades and heavy maint? However, In addition to reducing electrical use, new datacenters (and all buildings) MUST reduce/stop using fresh water for cooling. Fresh ground water, like oil, is basically a non-renewable resource that we are drawing down at an alarming rate. Could this data center be cooled via sea water taken in, warmed up a bit, and returned? From inside www.ngwa.org: "Many areas of the world rely on nonrenewable ground water resources, defined here as aquifer systems whose replenishment rates are so small that, for all practical purposes, their development is unsustainable and will eventually deplete the available water in storage." (FEW: Think Food/Energy/Water, to get it!)
Mmmm | Published: 02:33 GMT, 18 November 2007
Wow. $405 mil for a crazy data centre like that? Especially with the weak dollar, that sounds like a good buy.
Reich Winger's Nightmare | Published: 02:12 GMT, 18 November 2007
One word: Earthquake(s)
Location location location. | Published: 01:38 GMT, 18 November 2007
Chubu's located about mid-way between Tokyo and Osaka. This will require significant network pipage into Tokyo before anyone will be really interested in it, and sufficiently low latency to matter.
youre an idiot | Published: 00:40 GMT, 18 November 2007
from the sounds of it theyre going to use the ground water as cooling, rather than ventilation in the rock. If youve ever drank well water, you know that it is damn cold all year round, unless youre like in Yellowstone
that's retarded | Published: 00:27 GMT, 18 November 2007
an unground coal mine stays cold because earth is a good heat insulator, if you put a bunch of super computers down there it's just going to get hot with absolutely no hope of ventilation. Yeah it's 60F in there now but what happens if you put a giant heater in the thing? I could take a guess, like I said earth=insulator, as opposed to earth=well ventilated. Sun is doing particularly well these days.