Sun Microsystems recently announced the availability of their “eco-friendly” rack-mounted web servers. The latest model, the Sun Fire T2000, purports to introduce significant enhancements in computing capability, as well as new cost efficiencies in terms of power consumption, cooling costs, and rack space needed.

One case study shows the cost reduction of a web farm migrated from 1,000 dual-CPU Intel servers running Windows and WebSphere to 406 Sun T2000 servers running Solaris. Theoretically, this would provide you with seven times the overall performance and nine times the performance per watt than the old farm, which is possible, depending on the clock speed of the old farm, reducing operating costs from $2.63 million to $550,000 per year, representing a total cost savings of $2.08M.

In addition to the reduced power costs, this would include a savings in monthly rack space costs, as the Sun Fires have a much smaller size footprint given its computing capacity. And of course, less power drain means a reduced need for component and rack cooling. This is music to my ears. I am used to using my servers in double duty as Foreman Grills in the break room.

Of course, you would spent anywhere from $5M-10M to migrate to those 1,000 new servers, but that’s another story. Not to mention the switching costs relating to manpower, migration, disaster contingency, potential downtime, potential opportunity cost, etc. But that’s another story.

This new “CoolThreads” technology features an UltraSPARC T1 processor, which is an eight-core CPU capable of running four threads per core. Thus, each CPU can run 32 parallel threads to support high throughput database operations or Internet searches. Not shabby.

While there is no question that these servers offer more computing capability with real system power efficiencies, I question Sun’s positioning of these servers as “eco-friendly.” Sun claims that the technology has the potential to cut the number of installed Web servers in data centers around the world by 50 percent, therefore causing a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from oil- and coal-fueled power that would be the equivalent to planting 1 million acres of trees. This, of course, assumes that the “potential” that Sun is describing is actually achievable. I haven’t seen the basis for this claim, although I assume some degree of research was done on the subject.

Of course, the CO2 emissions Sun is referring to are the one’s from the oil or coal-fueled power plants that provide electricity upstream from your data center. So if your grid is powered by some other source, such as nuclear, wind, solar, or hydro, you don’t factor into this. Is this a million acres of trees a year? Ten years? Is this a one-time million acres of trees, or recurring, if some targeted number of server installations is reached?

With regard to Sun’s claim about slashing the number of web servers in half; this violates a fundamental rule of human nature. When we realize an efficiency in something tangible, such as time or space, we immediately try to find ways of filling the newly emptied space with something else. In this case, that would simply be more servers. Remember how email was supposed to free up all of our time by keeping us out of meetings? Hmm.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for more efficient systems that use less electricity, and if that means it helps the ozone layer, then great. However, from a technology buyer’s perspective, I am going to be more convinced by the cost savings and uptick in my processing power, not some corporate good will towards mother nature, perceived or otherwise. If Sun marketers are banking on CIOs picketing outside of Yahoo!’s global headquarters, carrying signs that say “Yahoo! didn’t switch - they are tree killers!”, they have another thing coming.
Nevertheless, this latest product move by Sun is a good one, from a technology advancement perspective. Sun has positioned itself, once again, squarely in the path of its competitors, by putting forth a powerful new product. To me, the real question is how will Sun’s competitors react to the marketing move.

While I question the eco-friendly marketing position of these new Sun systems, it is hard to argue with the computing capability.

Cheers.