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Sun to Create Underground Japanese Datacenter

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 17, 2007 06:39 PM
from the only-problem-is-the-view dept.
Sun Microsystems Businesses IT
Kurtz'sKompund writes with word of a Sun project in Japan, one that's taking a somewhat non-standard approach to data center construction. To save on power, heating, and water costs, the consortium is going to be building their center in an abandoned coal mine. The outpost will be created by lowering Blackbox systems into the ground; estimates on savings run to $9 million annually in electricity alone.
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  • Title should read: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2007, @06:41PM (#21393439)
    Sun to Create Japanese Datacenter where the Sun don't shine.
  • This could be an interesting use of the Earth's tendency to be a thermal sink. Caves are always about 55 F, as I recall. Maybe they can use this to their advantage.

    • Re:Thermal fun (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RallyNick (577728) on Saturday November 17 2007, @07:08PM (#21393617)
      The temperature in a cave means nothing, unless you take into account the cave's ability to dissipate heat somewhere (water or air moving through the cave). If you go inside a cave that's been at constant 55F for a thousand years and you suddenly heat it with 50 kilowatts of power from your data center the temperature will settle at 255F in a hurry. About the only advantage you get from a cave is a constant supply of really cold water (if sufficient rain that year). Ambient air temperature is irrelevant since usually you don't have a strong draft in a deep cave and static air will heat up pretty quickly.
      • If you go inside a cave that's been at constant 55F for a thousand years and you suddenly heat it with 50 kilowatts of power from your data center the temperature will settle at 255F in a hurry.

        But why 255F particularly?

        • Re:Thermal fun (Score:5, Funny)

          by theskipper (461997) on Saturday November 17 2007, @08:53PM (#21394237)
          Whoa. Coincidentally, that's the optimum incubation temperature for Mothra larvae.

          For the sake of humanity, let's hope that Sun is factoring this into their cooling calculations.

      • Ever hear of conduction cooling?
      • Its not a cave, though. Its an abandoned coal mine. That means that there's ventilation infrastructure of some sort. And Sun's datacenter will hardly fill up the entire mine. That means that they can use the unused portions of the mine as a heat exchanger: bring in air from the empty portion to cool the datacenter, and dump the hot air back out to that same area to allow for cooling.

        The issue I see is humidity. Mines, caves and other underground passages are usually more humid than open areas, simply b

        • Re:Thermal fun (Score:4, Interesting)

          by BosstonesOwn (794949) on Saturday November 17 2007, @10:47PM (#21394839)
          Does not the air conditioning cycle in these black boxes also remove humidity ? I worked at Sun and got to play with these containers. They remove the humidity from in coming air and are cooled with water.

          It seems like the idea is to use the mines water to cool the containers and dump it back into the mine to be cooled and reused. They also have dehumidifiers built into the Black box to prevent condensating moisture inside.

          I worked on wiring one with a couple cohorts and even sweating in these things is a joke , it's pretty much sucked up in about 5 minutes of being sediment in the box.
      • I'm pretty sure there are some flaws in your thinking. I was in a coal mine recently (Iron Mt.), and the tour center there used air from the cave to keep the place cool in the summer. They said that the temperature is very very stable.

        But I guess it does have air moving at a respectable clip from the air hole at one end of the mine.

        (It was amazing that men with hand tools dug a hole big enough to put the entire Empire State building in with only the antenna sticking out! And in the dark too.)

      • NORAD (Score:3, Informative)

        by jamrock (863246)
        You raise an interesting point about heat dissipation in an underground datacenter. I remember seeing something on NORAD years ago about the construction of the command center inside Cheyenne Mountain. One of the things that stuck with me was the fact that there was no dedicated heating system: they merely ducted the waste heat from their 150+ mainframes throughout the entire installation. Kept 'em all nice and toasty warm, even in a Colorado winter.

  • Savings in Electricity... (Score:3, Informative)

    by darthflo (1095225) on Saturday November 17 2007, @06:51PM (#21393507)
    According to TFA, $9M could be saved on electricity when using 30'000 server cores. Also according to TFA, 10'000 cores are planned with a $405M budget. If power demand scales directly with the number of cores, this would equate savings of $3M annually. Based only on these savings (which of course won't be the only factor, but since TFS and TFA single them out so clearly), this project breaks even after a measly 135 years or about five and a half times Sun's current age.
      • You are, of course, correct in your assessment.

        Your signature is strangely and eerily correct also.

        "Knowledge is power. However, once you have sufficient power, knowledge is optional."

  • Are they crush proof? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rueger (210566) on Saturday November 17 2007, @06:55PM (#21393535) Homepage
    The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale.

    I don't know, but placing servers 100m underground in a place that routinely is hit by large earthquakes seems a dubious idea. The containers themselves may survive a quake, but what happens when the disused coal mine collapses onto and around them? Even if the containers and servers survive, will the power and data cables? If the tunnels collapse how will you get to and from the servers for maintenance?

    • Re:Are they crush proof? (Score:5, Funny)

      by darthflo (1095225) on Saturday November 17 2007, @07:20PM (#21393675)
      Two possible outcomes:
      1: Mine collapses, buries everything under millions of tons of rocks and stuff, Blackboxes and cabling survives, Sun market's "the world's most secure datacenter".
      2: Mine collapses, buries everything under millions of tons of rocks and stuff, Blackboxes and/or cabling gets scratched and/or really damaged, Sun hires Godzilla (this is Japan, where Godzilla's big in, remember?) to smash away them rocks and free the mine once again.
        • "The military fires rockets and microwaves into him, just making him mad"

          We all know that governments can't do anything right. Sun is a corporation, when they fire missles and microwaves Godzilla will pull his socks up and dig harder.
    • Not to mention the fact that coal dust is extremely explosive. I wouldn't like to see a few sparks in there after a major quake. But then again I guess they know what they are doing.

    • Re:Are they crush proof? (Score:5, Funny)

      by couchslug (175151) on Saturday November 17 2007, @08:01PM (#21393945)
      "If the tunnels collapse how will you get to and from the servers for maintenance?"

      Good reason to have onsite admins!

    • [...] what happens when the disused coal mine collapses onto and around them?
      My guess is it'll be a cooler version of the story about a computer that was lost inside of a wall. "Damn! It responds to a ping, but all I see is this big hole in the ground." ;-)

    • If it happens and you end up with damaged hardware you consider it a loss.

      However Sun and most heavy iron server companies now Have ILOM enabled systems. Quite easily managed from remote locations. I have loaded firmware onto e10k's in New Jersey from a project in Colombia via remote connections.

      */me shudders with the thought of the new DST and patching all the Sun boxes earlier this year*

      Really are great tools Integrated Lights Out Management is , I have to say one of the best inventions that they have mad
    • I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself.
      After all, wouldn't putting blackboxes 100 meters down inside a coal mine make them impossible to find?

  • Cheaper labor... (Score:4, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Saturday November 17 2007, @06:57PM (#21393549) Homepage
    Since this is a basement dweller's dream job come true, Sun won't have to pay too much for labor.
  • Damn flu medicine makes my head feel like its full of glue. I could have sworn the title was "Sun To Create Underground Japanese Detector". I had to go read the article to try and figure out what underground Japanese are, and why you would want to detect them.

    • I had to go read the article to try and figure out what underground Japanese are, and why you would want to detect them.
      They're like secret Asians.

  • Somebody (Score:4, Funny)

    by woot account (886113) on Saturday November 17 2007, @07:26PM (#21393709)
    has been reading Cryptonomicon.
  • I remember the last San Fran Earthquake and we had to get a warm site up and running using all the backup tapes from our offsite storage company. The storage vault was 100% ok, the warm site was 100% ok and I couldn't get anyone to drive the truck through a post apocalyptic thunder dome. I suspect that getting a bunch of nerds to work in an abandoned coal mine will be greeted by dumbstruck looks when you see a giant fire breathing dinosaur.

  • You can do lots with an old mine (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2007, @08:40PM (#21394161)
    A couple of examples come to mind.

    The Government of Canada marijuana farm is located in an old copper mine in Manitoba. You can't beat the security, which is something mentioned in tfa. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2001/08/02/marijuana_010802.html [www.cbc.ca]

    A solar neutrino observatory is installed in an old mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Canads. It has the advantage of being impervious to almost all kinds of radiation, except of course for neutrinos. http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/ [queensu.ca]

    As I look at the other posts, I see lots of naysayers. Well there are at least a couple of cases where old mines have been used successfully for other things.
    • Remember seeing a documentary on an ultra-deep salt mine in Utah, now largely played out. Big empty space, no light except for what you bring with you. Lots of worn out machinery that's just abandoned because its value as scrap is less than the cost of bringing it back up. Creepy.

      One other use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vo4vEgxHtI [youtube.com]
  • Old mines have a nasty tendency to flood, or at least slowly get a few inches of water over the years from seepage.

  • Unforseen Expense (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pooua (265915) on Saturday November 17 2007, @10:13PM (#21394663) Homepage
    They save a bundle in HVAC costs, but now they face the prospect of black lung disease...

  • NERV??!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hercynium (237328) <Hercynium@ g m a il.com> on Saturday November 17 2007, @11:30PM (#21395091) Homepage Journal
    If they name the systems in that facility the MAGI, I think it's time I move a few hundred miles inland.
  • This is Japan after all. Clearly, they will be building a secret base where they will build an army of giant robots to either
    a) defend against extra-terrestrial attacks,
    b) attack Microsoft.
  • Data center - right!
    Its going to be Dr. Evil's lair.
      • what about setting up water cooled servers, with water running on a closed circuit, through a stainless steel sink at sea? no corrosion there. The coasts of my country (Argentina) face the antarctic currents of the Atlantic ocean, and keeps it COLD all year long.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WoLpH (699064)
      Since the computers produce a lot of heat the humidity wouldn't be much of a problem, try putting a computer in a humid garage, the computer will be just about the only thing dry in there.

      I do wonder how much this thing will really save, I wouldn't be so surprised if the costs are comparable to the normal installation (remember, the normal installation costs for these things is near 0, they just need a power, network and water plug). If they'd just put the server somewhere with some other cooling source ava
    • failover to a good machine, swap out the bad one during annual maintenance. Sun already has a product for dealing with that particular issue ( Sun Cluster ) and it's open-source

    • Putting the servers in a deep dark hole is one way to save on heating costs. The other is to not heat your servers.
      And risk them freezing? Never!

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