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Touring the Sun “Project Blackbox”

I just left one of the AMD facilities in Austin, TX, where Sun Microsystems had a Project Blackbox on display. There was a short presentation where Sun representatives gave a quick overview of the design — including some impressive numbers for the amount of equipment and power you can run in the Blackbox. The key is the cooling system. The Blackbox uses an air circulation system that separates each rack with a water-cooled heat displacer. The servers are then racked sideways so that air can move clockwise inside the Blackbox. HEPA filters clean incoming air, and a dehumidifier extracts moisture.

The container itself is “water tight”, but it was recommended that the Blackbox be covered if placed outside. (Contrary to the photoshopped pictures of the Blackbox sitting on open building rooftops.)

I snapped a few pictures with my phone during the tour. These first two show the Project Blackbox sitting on a trailer:

Inside the container doors. This first door leads to an air circulation chamber:

Within the air circulation chamber, another door leads to the racks:

A rack being slid out from within the Project Blackbox:

At the back of Project Blackbox, this photo shows the dehumidifier, and the rack for networking gear:

Power, water, and network ports on the Sun Project Blackbox:

The power ports on the Sun Project Blackbox:

The representatives claimed that an empty Blackbox (ie., no servers) would likely cost between $300,000 - $400,000.

A bird threat, flash flooding, and now snow in Austin

Wow, we’re off to an interesting year. Last week it was a dead bird scare, and this week we were hit with flash flooding, and now snow! (Yes, it snows in Texas. Not often, but it happens.)

When the roads freeze over, cities in Texas tend to shut down. If you’re from a cold region, this sounds a little silly. But unfortunately, it happens so infrequently here that we’re not prepared for it. We drive on summer tires year round (well, I do anyway), we don’t have ice-scrapers or salt-trucks, and our roads are designed to withstand 100F+ conditions, not 20F, so they are very slippery when icy.

I took this shot this morning to give you an idea what it’s like out there:

I went back to the grocery store today for more supplies, and while cutting through the “snacks and chips” aisle, I couldn’t help notice how ransacked it was. Apparently, massive consumption of potato chips is how folks in the area make it though the cold nights:

Naming the conference rooms

Now that the paint is (mostly) dry in the new office, it’s time to start naming our conference rooms. Ideally, conference room names work in a theme (preferably one that that offers a slight puzzle) that is easily memorable and unique enough to not confuse the rooms. To add to the requirements, we also wanted something that reflected our Austin location.

After some creative brainstorming, we finally decided to go with the original historical street names of the numbered streets in downtown Austin.

For a little back-story on this, I pulled the following quote from the article, “Austin: Where the streets have many names (and history, too).”

“With the exception of Congress Avenue, the streets running north and south downtown parallel the order in which rivers flow throughout the state. From east to west, the streets (and the rivers) are: Sabine, Red River, Neches, Trinity, San Jacinto, Brazos, Colorado, Lavaca, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces and Rio Grande. Most of the numbered downtown streets bore tree names until the late 1880s. They included:”

• Second Street - Live Oak
• Third Street - Cypress
• Fourth Street - Cedar
• Fifth Street - Pine
• Sixth Street - Pecan
• Seventh Street - Bois de Arc
• Eighth Street - Hickory
• Ninth Street - Ash
• 10th Street - Mulberry
• 11th Street - Mesquite

So there we have it. Simple, unique enough to remember, a local flare, and a slight puzzle for the out-of-towner’s. [And yes, thankfully we only needed nine names.]

First day in the new office (take two)

Well, it turns out that bird-flu zombies didn’t take the Capital, so today was our first day in the new office!

It was a long and busy day, so I didn’t have time for a lengthly post, but I did have my Nokia N73 on me, so how about a few pictures instead:

Last week’s construction:

Inside. It’s still a bit empty, and we’re not exactly sure how we’re going to layout the desks, but it’s off to a great start!

The building from the outside (and no, we’re not the first floor tenant ;-):

Our view onto Congress Ave:

Dead birds shut down downtown Austin (was: First day in the new office)

I was hoping to start today by posting a few pictures of our brand-new Optaros office in downtown Austin. Today was to be our first day in the new space. Unfortunately, downtown Austin is closed today, after authorities found a number (possibly dozens) of dead birds along Congress Ave (the street the office is on), which happens to be right in front of the State Capitol building. With the legislative session scheduled to begin tomorrow, the authorities have taken an extra-paranoid view on the situation (which is fine by me.)

The State called in the police, fire department, and the 6th Civil Support Team (WMD) a “Texas National Guard unit, created in 1999 to respond to terrorist incidents involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, as well as other disasters and catastrophic events, both natural and man made.”

As of 10:45am, the local paper (The Statesman) and news sites have no updates.

For more:

• Dead birds shut down Congress Avenue
• Health Dept.: No Public Health Threat Despite Large Number Of Dead Birds
• KXAN Photo Gallery: Dead Birds Shut Down Congress Avenue

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[Update: 11:15am]
The news makes it to MSNBC, which reports that the dead bird count is more like 60! Downtown Austin shut down after bird deaths

First week on the new job

Yup — a new job. It’s a strange feeling after nearly five years with my previous employer, but the time had come to take on some new challenges and change things up a bit. I’ve joined a company called Optaros, based out of Boston, although I’ll be working from the Austin office scheduled to open in 2007.

Optaros is an “international consulting and systems integration firm” specializing in “Next Generation Internet” development, with a strong focus on leveraging (and participating in) Open Source software. That last bit was particularly import for me, and thankfully, the Open Source and Agile Development memes run strong in the company. In fact, the culture of the company is probably the number one reason I decided to join, though it doesn’t hurt that I’ve worked with some of these folks before (and was happy to be working with them again.)

I hoped up to Boston for my first few days, which was warmer or colder then Texas, depending on who you ask. The difference, of course, is that Boston had snow Monday morning, which was a welcome novelty for me. My time in Boston was spent getting to know people, getting plugged-in to the company, and wiping my new laptop to install linux (Ubuntu Edgy, to be specific, which is what I run at home on my non-OS X machines.)

It’s an exciting change, and hopefully I’ll be able to share more details once I’ve had a few more weeks to get settled in.

APUG: Austin (TX) Python Users Group meeting tonight, 7pm at Enthought

Just a reminder, the Austin (TX) Python Users Group meeting is tonight, 7pm, at Enthought, in downtown Austin. Eugene Oden will be giving a presentation on using Pyro (Python Remote Objects.)

FYI, I have a new mobile phone number

Of course, I’m not going to post it to my blog; But if you had my previous mobile number and haven’t received a message from me yet with my new number, you might want to drop me an email or something to get my new digits. The old number (which is on my business cards) will be disabled soon.

On a related note, if you happen to be in Austin and need a T-Mobile store, I’ve been twice now to the one at 4700 Guadalupe (at the Triangle.) There’s a guy there named Andrew who’s been extremely cool — excellent service. (Good enough to mention in a blog post!)