Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun Microsystems) has completed new Broomfield, Colorado datacenter. The Broomfield facility has new energy-efficient systems and expertise, including efficient datacenter design and power and cooling technologies. Through this project, the company anticipates to save more than $1 million in electricity costs and 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year in Broomfield.
The project will help Sun Microsystems reduce its carbon footprint by 6% in the US. The company also announced the availability of new datacenter efficiency services to help customers retrofit and build more efficient datacenters like Sun’s Broomfield and Santa Clara datacenters.
The new Broomfield datacenter follows similar Sun projects completed in Blackwater, UK, Santa Clara, California and Bangalore, India in August 2007. It builds on designs used in Sun’s Santa Clara datacenter and features water savings, chemical reduction, free air cooling and flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS). As in Santa Clara, the Broomfield datacenter is based on Sun’s Pod Architecture, which delivers dramatic footprint compression while still providing capacity for future growth. A full complement of Sun’s high-performance, energy-efficient SPARC and x64 servers, Open Storage and tape products and the OpenSolaris Operating System are at the heart of the Broomfield datacenter. Specifics products include the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 and M5000 servers, as well as the SunStorageTek SL8500 modular library system, the Sun Fire X4500 storage server and Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems. These systems are part of a major hardware replacement program that led to a 66% space compression. In one example, Sun consolidated 63 servers and 30 direct attached storage devices to two Sun servers.
The Broomfield datacenter showcases revolutionary datacenter design with the latest in modularity, scalability and flexibility to drive incredible efficiencies in cost, electricity and overall carbon savings, said Dave Douglas, senior vice president of cloud computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. As a company we’ve achieved our first 20% reduction in electricity usage since 2002, and the Broomfield datacenter is a great step forward in meeting our goal of another 20% reduction.
The company has achieved 60% datacenter square footage compression globally, decreasing the company’s datacenter operating expenses by 30% in the Bay Area alone during the last two years. In October 2008, Sun announced the reduction of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from U.S. operations by 23%, surpassing its goal five years early. The Broomfield datacenter is a major contributing factor in Sun’s ability to reach its goal of another 20% reduction in GHG emissions.
Features of the new Sun Broomfield datacenter include:
Greater space efficiency: A scalable, modular datacenter based on the Sun Pod Architecture led to a 66% footprint compression, by reducing 496,000 square feet from the former StorageTek campus in Louisville, Colo. to 126,000 square feet;
Reduced electrical consumption: By 1 million kWh per month, enough to power 1,000 homes in Colorado;
Reduced raised floor datacenter space: From 165,000 square feet to less than 700 square feet of raised floor datacenter space, representing a $4M cost avoidance;
Greener, cleaner architecture: Including flywheel UPS that eliminates lead and chemical waste by removing the need for batteries, and a non-chemical water treatment system, saving water and reducing chemical pollution;
Enhanced scalability: Incorporated 7 MW of capacity that scales up to 40% higher without major construction;
The cooling: The Liebert advanced XD cooling system with dynamic cooling controls is capable of supporting rack loads up to 30kW and a chiller system 24% more efficient than ASHRAE standards;
Overall excellence: Recognized with two Ace awards for Project of the Year from the Associated Contractors of Colorado, presented for excellence in design, execution, complexity and environmental application.