Black Box Landscaping

Sun customers who are in the market for a Sun Modular Datacenter
(aka a Black
Box) are probably more concerned with adding cost-effective instant
data center capacity than with landscaping. Rightly so! However,
a Black Box has to go somewhere. As a dedicated gardener, for the last six
months I have been watching with interest the creation of a handsome
landscape setting for the new Black Box now inside of Sun’s Menlo
Park campus. “MPK” as we call the
Sun Menlo Park campus includes one of Sun’s two award-winning
Executive Briefing Centers (“EBC”).
The new Black Box is in the EBC courtyard in MPK.

I have a particular interest in the Black Box because the
Technology Advisory Board or TAB, which I manage went on a prototype tour
about six months before the product was announced in 2006. It has been exciting
to watch that prototype data center in a shipping container turn into a
real product.

From the 2006 announcement until April 2007, MPK sometimes got to see a
Black Box when its truck came by as part of the
Sun Tour.
In April 2007, an
April Fool prank featured an empty Black Box appearing in the center of
MPK’s grass amphitheatre. It was set up as an executive playspace
for
CEO Jonathan Schwartz and

CTO Greg Papadopoulos. One of the display boards created for the prank
showed a faked photo of what MPK would look like with Black Boxes (including
windows) taking over the whole amphitheatre.

In March 2008, the MPK campus was being spruced up with new paint
and landscaping. It was clear from the size and space that was left open outside
of the EBC that a Black Box was coming our way, so I took some pictures.
Then, this summer, MPK finally got its own real Black Box. Photos:

Sun MPK from the air

April Fools 2007, Fake Black Boxes

Mar 08: Space for Black Box

July 2008 – New MPK Black Box

MPK Black Box

Sep 08: SEEDs Visit Black Box

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson