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By Greg McNevin

August 22, 2007: Being green is the new black in the business world, but trends aside thinking green helps both the environment and the hip pocket. With this in mind, Sun is making a new play for data centre efficiency with a combination of software, hardware and services.

With sustainability in mind, Sun has kicked off a range of new programs to improve data centre performance, cut energy use and boost bottom lines, mostly via efficient server design and the use of its Solaris 10 operating system.

The company has launched what it calls “The Eco Innovation Initiative”, an extension of the Eco Responsibility Initiative it launched in November 2005 that will see the company add “Eco Ready Kits” and a suite of services to its line of SunFire servers, Solaris OS and throughput computing and storage technology to help IT departments slash energy use.

The new tools Sun is offering include the Sun Eco Assessment Kit, the Eco Optimisation Kit and the Eco Virtualisation Kit. The Assessment Kit aids in the analysis of data centre energy efficiency via specialised services tailored to systems, storage and infrastructure, while the Optimisation Kit helps optimise, consolidate, refresh and recycle hardware infrastructure.

Thirdly, as you would expect from the name, the Virtualisation Kit offers virtualised solutions to improve hardware utilisation and efficiency. Solaris 10 OS makes up the core of the solution, with Solaris Containers complimenting it to enable companies to run multiple software-isolated applications on a single system. Sun claims that Solaris can increase resource utilisation by up to 80% while enabling hundreds of virtual environments to run on a single operating system instance.

When it comes to services, Sun says it is also helping to cut energy use by helping customers fine tune the distribution of cooling air, improve rack placement and help them respond to other infrastructure factors.

Finally, Sun is touting the lean-power credentials of its UltraSPARC T2 processor, dubbing it the most energy efficient processor on the market. Sun claims the UltraSPARC T2 weighs in at one-tenth to one-thirtieth the power consumption of its competitors. Sun adds that the chip sets the gold standard for green computing and efficiency by combining the lowest power consumption with double the cores, 16 times the threads and 4 times the throughput and even on-chip network and security functionality.

Along with the T2 chip itself, the company is also showing off its full UltraSPARC T1-based systems, claiming they offer up to 3x the throughput at half the power and space consumption.

“The environmental and economic impact of increasing power and cooling in the data centre is a major concern to our customers,” said Jeya Kumar, senior vice president of the Services Group at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun's Eco Services Suite is designed for customers who want to make cost effective changes to their data centre operations, which can boost efficiency by up to 20 percent.”

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