Sun unveils blades architecture with new networking, manageability, cooling management
Sun Microsystems launched new products and technologies that span the data center and include a new blades architecture, new networking technologies and seven new systems based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series.
Sun’s new servers deliver increased performance, efficiency and scale in the data center while supporting multiple operating systems like the Solaris OS, Linux and Windows and a variety of virtualization solutions including Sun xVM Ops Center, VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Solaris Containers, which allows integrated virtualization with low overhead, at no cost. Sun’s new x64 servers and blade systems powered by the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series are:
- Sun Fire X4270 server – for consolidation and virtualization in a dense 2RU form factor for branch office and departmental settings as well as for horizontally scaled data center consolidation needs
- Sun Blade X6270 server module – provides more I/O throughput and an all-in-one virtualization solution, including server and network, when combined with the Sun Virtual Network Express Module (NEM)
- Sun Fire X4170 server – delivers the performance of a 4U system in a compact 1U form factor with savings of up to 75 percent in rack space, while consuming 60 percent less energy at lower prices
- Sun Fire X2270 server – Offers 3x the performance at 66 percent the energy consumption of current generation systems and delivers savings of up to 50 percent in data center real estate
- Sun Fire X4275 server – an ideal server for streaming multimedia applications, delivering 12TB of raw storage at less than $1/GB of storage, with significant space and energy savings
- Sun Ultra 27 workstation – supports the NVIDIA FX5800, the Ultra 27 workstation offers excellent visualization performance with up to 12GB of main memory and 4GB of graphics memory
- Sun Blade X6275 server module – supports onboard quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand and pushes the limits of performance, providing up to nine TeraFLOPS of peak performance in a fully populated Sun Blade 6048 chassis. Optional Sun Flash Modules provide 24GB of storage per node.
Sun’s integrated networking solutions include:
- Sun Blade 6000 Virtual Network Express Module (NEM) – a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), zero management, rapid network virtualization provisioning network module that delivers low cost, 10:1 reduced cabling and takes complexity out of the network infrastructure by eliminating a full switching layer
- Sun Blade 6048 InfiniBand (IB) Quad Data Rate NEM (QNEM) – solution for intense workloads with low latency and high throughput I/O requirements. Can easily scale from a single chassis to compute clusters with more than 5000 nodes
- Sun Quad Data Rate IB and Host Channel Adaptors (QDR HCA) – Extends QDR functionality to blade and rack server compute nodes.
Via Sun’s Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM), customers can simply and easily manage Sun blades and servers. Sun’s ILOM also integrates with System Management platforms such as Sun xVM Ops Center and other third party management and monitoring frameworks.
The Solaris platform, including the Solaris 10 OS and OpenSolaris, has been extended to provide performance, energy efficiency and reliability enhancements for the new Intel Xeon processor 5500 series. Solaris-based systems using the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series can automatically leverage new Intel Quick Path Interconnect, Intel Turbo Boost and Intel Hyper-Threading technologies to further improve performance and scalability.
The new Sun Cooling Door for the Sun Blade 6048 modular system provides six times more efficient rack cooling than standard data center cooling systems and increases effective compute density by up to 70 percent over traditional in-row cooling options. The Sun Cooling Door can leverage existing chilled-water infrastructures or eco-friendly refrigerant gas.
The new Sun Fire x64 products start at $1,488 U.S. list price.