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I read an interesting article the other day about an open movie project by the blender foundation (creators of a free open source 3D content creation suite). They used Sun's Grid computing (similar to Amazons Cloud) to render the entire movie.
In a joint conference today January 16, 2008, Sun and MySQL announced the acquisition of MySQL by Sun Microsystems.
The announcement comes as no surprise with the recent announcement of Oracle's acquirement of BEA Systems.
You can read more about the MySQL and Sun announcement on the news and announcements section on the MySQL website
Yesterday marked the end of Sun Microsystem Europe's Eco tour 2007. The tour, using a hybrid bicycle, was used to highlight locations throughout Germany that either used energy efficiently or produced energy efficient consumer products.
Microsoft Germany announced on July 2nd that Marcel Schneider will defect from Sun Microsystems and go to work for Microsoft.
Schneider is currently executive director and vice president at Sun Microsystems GmbH and will join the executive board.
I read the press release and honestly find what he says about Microsoft while still being an employee of Sun very interesting.
From the press release
Microsoft ist das spannendste Unternehmen in unserer Branche. Niemand ist nach meiner Beobachtung besser aufgestellt als Microsoft, um Unternehmen leistungsfähige, zuverlässige und sichere IT-Lösungen anzubieten
Translated:
Microsoft is the most exciting enterprise in our industry. Nobody is better set up after my observation than Microsoft, in order to offer to enterprises efficient, reliable and safe IT solutions.
God that about makes me want to throw up! That kind of comment is better said after you have started working for your new company, not while still working for the old. I think it's totally bad form.
And what does Sun Microsystems GmbH think of Mr. Schneiders departure?
....
Yep, no press release, nothing, not a word from Sun, I couldn't find anything anywhere even somewhat official that anything occured. Is it possible that Mr. Schneider caught Sun with proverbial pants down?
I'm sure you have already heard about Sun Micro's "Project Blackbox" where they vow that "we will never look at a shipping container the same way again"
I was curious, I knew what is was (a big black shipping container that's also a data center) but I didn't know the details.
The Blackbox arrived in Europe in mid May after completing its tour throught the USA. It's now currently in Germany, though the website hasn't been updated to say so, and was 'officially' introduced to German journalists on Thursday June 21st in Munich Germany after travelling through Austria. So since it's in my new neighborhood I wanted to see what the fuss was about.
It was also launched the same day as the Eco-Tour and continues the theme of Sun's "global social-responsibility campaign".
What I found interesting is that it's cooling system is 20% more efficient than traditional data centers. Sun doesn't say how it achieves those efficiencies but maybe it is because of it being designed to fit into a shipping container? Also as part of Suns Eco Responsibility campaign they have promised to take back any container they sell and recycle it in an "enviornmentally friendly way"
I downloaded the official brochure from sun and I found the following excerpt quite interesting.
Project Blackbox can be populated with 250 Sun Fire servers configured for grid computing across seven racks inside the container. An eighth rack contains network switches, a dehumidifier, thermal management systems, and alarm and EPO controls. However, organizations have considerable flexibility in determining how their Project Blackbox containers are configured-- and the level of performance they can deliver. For example, one container can:
- Hold 120 Sun Fire" T2000 systems--or 250 Sun Fire" T1000 systems with 2,000 cores and 8,000 simultaneous threads. 250 CoolThreads" technology- based servers support four times the number of Web users and provide five times the efficiency of the same number of similarly configured Dell Xeon servers
- Customers will also save approximately $1,000 per CoolThreads technology- based system per year in energy costs over traditional datacenters, as well as savings from the container's cooling advantages
- Customers in Northern California qualify for energy rebates of up to $240,000 if they upgrade from Xeon-based systems to Sun Fire CoolThreads technology-based servers in Project Blackbox
- Hold up to 1,000 x64 cores
- Support seven terabytes of memory
- Provide more than two petabytes of storage
- Provides easy management of and support for up to 10,000 simultaneous desktop users--without administrators
- Host a configuration that would place it among the 200 fastest supercomputers in the world
