Sun nails four buyers in 15 months with White Trash Data Center

Sun Microsystems has spent of lot of time insisting that customers actually want to buy some of its white trash, trailerized data centers. And now the company has a press release to back up its insistiation. The lone, public customer for the Sun Modular Datacenter - aka "Project Blackbox," aka "We'll see you in the Silicon …

[Anonymous Coward]

Better clarify that "wifebeater" comment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeveless_shirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Wifebeater

I do hope they throw in a case or three of it, to be strategically cooled in the cold-air outlets. One can is just stingy.

[Gareth]

re: Better clarify that "wifebeater" comment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Turner

[xjy]

half-a-million bucks a unit

Don't really need to sell too many of these to rake in the revenues. And it sounds like the real work is in preparing the assembly manual - most of the bits and pieces will be lying around in the plant. Nice piece of gear - but is it hot-swappable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chavs

So, they're throwing in a Chav with every unit? Is he for security?

[Sampler]

Power and water?

What - no genie and a tank to store what you need to have a "datacentre on the go" =D

[Anonymous Coward]

only people that get them free (Stamford) or stupid people buy these

The real answer is to update your existing datacenter vs. branching out to the parking lot. Follow PG&E's lead.

http://knowledgestorm.fastcompany.com/fastco/search/viewabstract/92258/index.jsp

[Anonymous Coward]

Floaters

By trailer extension, those floating data centres must be Cajun swamp-dwellers ala Southern Comfort.

Personally I set my toff firewall to only accept datagrams from the most presigious datacentres with the finest lineage. You never can be too careful what the internet drags home.

[Anonymous Coward]

amanfromMars owns one...

Found one... in amanfromMars backyard

http://hostingfu.com/files/images/sun-blackbox-mars.jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to the dogs?

Do they include a pack of mangy hounds that sleep under the trailer? Sun marketing are could flog them for the hillbilly customers.

[Glen Turner]

Computer centre already moving into parking lots

At a nearby university the data centre is moving into the parking lot a service at a time. First it was a backup generator in a shipping container, then a heat exchanger for the chillers, and most recently a demountable building appeared to replace the unpacking/assembly room which was previously in the computer centre.

With the servers being the only things left in the computer centre it's only a matter of time before they move into the parking lot too.

[Michael Jolly]

wonder...

.. If they ship to the UK, mind you with the amount of boats sinking in the channel lately that may not be a good thing. (pirate icon for the MS Napoli)

[Anigel]

RE: amanfromMars owns one...

Last I heard though he was upset with the latency on his wireless connection

[SoupDragon]

Google Earth?

Get the black helicopter brigade onto it right away.

[Anonymous Coward]

All those who wrote 'better clarify "wifebeater@"'

I never open El Reg without having the following tabs open:

1. Acronym Finder;

2. Urban Dictionary;

3. NetLingo;

4. OED;

5. Wikipedia and

6. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

That way I can usually follow at least some of the articles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just power and water?

Surely a data centre with just power and water's not going to be a hell of a lot of use to most people, a bit like plugging your desktop into the mains only without keyboard, monitor or network connection?

A spot of comms might be of some use, too, presumably

[Anonymous Coward]

re: amanfromMars owns one...

Well that proves that there must be water on mars!

[Antony Riley]

It's All Well And Good Until...

Enterprising scumbags work out there's a container worth $500,000 in the parking lot.

Then, said container will most likely no longer be in the parking lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cooling

I asked some bloke at Storage Expo, whose stand was advertising these, just what they mean by 'just add water' and exactly how much water you need to pump through one of these cases in order to cool it. Also, how wastefull this was and if you need to stick processed water or any old water (I live in the South east, so our water is so hard it's basically Chalk solution - not very good for pipes!) He said, in a slightly embarrased, "err, well actually..." tone that you in fact get a 2nd container with all of the water cooling equipment in it....

(Of course you can probably supply your own water from your datacentre coolers, but if you've got a datacentre, why wouldn't you just make some space inside?)

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia ...

The parking lot is in your data center.

Sorry, wrong website.

[Thomas Martin]

Wifebeater comment

A wifebeater is commonly known as a muscle shirt.

[Alan Gregson]

insistiation

Is that actually a word?

[James McGregor]

Utlimate optional extra

Would have to be a huge FO truck to pull the trailer about with, so that I can go cruising the streets at night and show off my gigantic periperherals. Preferably a monster truck with neon underlighting, tinted windows, a jacuzzi in the back (complete with bikini-clad beauties) and a bumper sticker reading "My other trailer is an SGI" or similar. And a portable fridge stacked full with Wifebeater, of course. :)

[Senor Beavis]

@Bert Ragnarok

You'll also need this handy online reference (not for the faint-hearted) to get Brit-speak:

http://www.viz.co.uk/profanisaurus/profan_index.php

[zaphod beeblebrox]

re:wifebeater

@Bert Ragnarok: google's query define:$word usually does the trick:)

[Noogie Brown]

Looking up words

I'd recommend onelook.com . It searchs all the others dicts for you

[Simon Greenwood]

re:Computer centre already moving into parking lots

BT have been doing this with phone exchanges for years, freeing up their buildings for more lucrative things, like, er, datacentres.

[George]

Insistiation

Insistence!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Senor Beavis

I think 'wife beater' is the American meaning referring to a sleeveless shirt, not a crate of Stella which would be the case in the UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Added Stella?

Anon Coward said

"I think 'wife beater' is the American meaning referring to a sleeveless shirt, not a crate of Stella which would be the case in the UK."

Yup - I was thinking exactly the same. Thx for pointing it out!

Spend 500k on a DC in a box, and get a crate of Stella...hmmmm I *knew* there was something wrong there. I'd be looking for a crate of a decent Belgian beer - like Leffe. And I'd want the fancy glasses thrown in as well

[Anonymous Coward]

@Utlimate optional extra

The only extra question is if Night Rider can park his car in the back of it?

[Kevin Fields]

Power + Water = PROFIT!

If these data center crates need power and water, maybe they can tack on one of these things and increase their profits?

http://www.icehouseamerica.com/index.asp

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun nails four buyers...

As opposed to "Sun screws four buyers..."

[GettinSadda]

Wifebeater?

Hang-on?

So you spend $500k on a datacentre and they throw in a free T-shirt?

Have I missed something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wifebeater + Cut Off Jeans (slang alert)

Here in sunny (not so much lately) Southern California if you happen to be wearing a wife-beater and cut off jeans at the beach it is known as a Mexican Wetsuit. Not sure where it came from but I heard it on the radio the other day, made me chuckle.

[Ian]

Picture evidence.

You've already published a picture of an entire boat-load of them being shippped out here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/10/radiohead_wartime_misery/

What more evidence do you need?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet connections extra?

Power and water needed. What about an Internet connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

PG&E example is stupid

How many supercomputer/HPC clusters run at 10% utilization?

Even if there are occasional times when a cluster is at 10% utilization, virtulization won't give it the resources it needs when it has to be run at 100% utilization.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a frigging hammer."

You guys are bloody nuts. "Wifebeater" means exactly what it sounds like- a married individual that beats their wife. This is very common among so-called "white trash", which is why it was part of the joke in this article.

[Brett Brennan]

Bruce Willis already wrecked one...

See "Live Free or Die Harder" - the hackers had one of these for their HQ...

Goes to show the baddies are always one step ahead...