Sun systems group marketing manager Marshall Choy demonstrates Sun's x64 open network systems for web infrastructure.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — As much as three times as fast as those built on previous Intel (www.intel.com) Xeon chips, software and technology developer Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com) has unveiled seven new Xeon 5500-based systems that combine Sun’s advanced blade architecture with new networking technologies that help companies deploy cost-effective, large-scale networks.
Sun’s Tuesday announcement marks the latest phase of Sun’s Open Network Systems approach to data center computing, designed to provide high performance, efficient, and scalable systems, designed to meet the needs of demanding virtualization, enterprise, web 2.0, and high-performance computing infrastructures.
The seven new systems includes the Sun Fire X4270 server, ideal for branch office or departmental needs, and for horizontally-scaled data center consolidation and virtualization, as well as the Sun Blade X6270 server module, which provides twice as much memory capacity as competing blades.
The 1U rack system, Sun Fire X4170, saves as much as 75 percent of rack space and consumes 60 percent less energy at half the cost of comparable 4-socket, 4U servers. The Sun Fire X2270 server offers the greatest energy savings and highest capacity of comparable systems for Web architectures and HPC clusters. The Sun Fire X4275 server delivers 12TB of raw storage for less than $1 per GB of storage, making it ideal for streaming multimedia applications.
The Sun Ultra 27 workstation offers advanced visualization capability and performance, with as much as 12GB of main memory and 4GB of graphics memory.
The Sun Blade X6275 server module is the first blade server to support on-board quad data rate InfiniBand for extreme performance and power efficiency for HPC applications.
Sun has also optimized its Solaris operating systems to work with its Xeon 5500 products. Solaris 10 OS and OpenSolaris take full advantage of the performance, energy efficiency, and reliability enhancements of Intel’s new Xeon 5500 processor, letting them automatically use Intel’s new Quick Path Interconnect, Turbo Boost, and Hyper-Threading technologies to improve performance and scalability.
“When Sun announced OpenSolaris 2008.11 back in November last year it was with full support for the Xeon 5500 already baked into the operating system, ” Sun Solaris revenue product engineering senior director Chris Armes wrote in a blog entry. “[I]n fact I’d go as far as saying it was the first operating system to be optimized for and take advantage of these features. Intel themselves have been actively contributing to the OpenSolaris community, OpenSolaris has been one of the key elements in the success of the relationship with Intel and the development of the platforms based on the Xeon 5500.”
In keeping with Sun’s focus on networking, the new Sun blades have built-in low-latency, high-performance networking called the Sun Virtual Network Express Module, which can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of deploying a large-scale blade solution into an existing network fabric, making Sun is the first vendor to deliver blades with integrated networking.
Sun’s website contains more details about the new system line, including video demonstrations.
