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Sun Unveils 64-bit Server Line
SumDog is one of many to let us know, PC World is reporting that Sun is expected to reveal the first few of their new 64-bit servers at their quarterly product rollout. From the article: "Formerly code-named Galaxy, the Sun Fire X2100, X4100, and X4200 servers represent the company's bid to woo customers, particularly the financial industry sector, away from rival server vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell."
been there, done that. got the White Album
that's almost as incredible as Microsoft unveiling a 32 bit operating system.
The future of 64-bit Sun servers is the Opteron.
Should we take this as the final sign that Sun is giving up on Sparc?
And as they move toward "normal" chips, should we expect that Sun will be able to continue to offer the hardware advantages (say, to do with reliability) that they held with Sparc, or are we going to be seeing them move closer to being a plain-box Opteron reseller-- in the same way that as Apple is moving to plain-jane x86, they are also giving up on technologies such as Open Firmware?
...but does it have 64-bit drivers for my HP all-in-one printer?
Are the hardware specs going to be available for the devices and cards used in these boxes? I'd love to port DragonFlyBSD to run on them. Perhaps I can glean the information required from the OpenSolaris code.
Do slashdot readers see Sun being relevant 10 years from now? Will they survive by selling 'mostly' software? I know they sell hardware, but they no longer control the full stack like IBM with POWER. Just a question.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
The UltraSPARC chips have been 64 bit for quite a while now. A more useful article summary would have pointed out the actual newsworthy bit of this story, which is that they're rolling out 64 bit x86 servers (running AMD Opterons).
Sun are really tooting their horn on this one. They paid for (presumably) a aircraft-towed banner to fly around the SF Bay today.
:)
Haven't seen one of those in ages
All Sun's servers have been 64-bit for the last about 10 years. so why even mention the 64-bitness?
actually, it would be more a news if sun were to release a 32-bit server.
The marketing talking head will claim that SPARC lives in Niagara and Rock, but note that Intel is now building a new x86-64 implementation that focuses on multicores just like Niagara and Rock. Given a choice between Niagara/Rock and Intel's/AMD's new multicore chips, most customers will prefer the latter.
The only future remaining for the SPARC is in esoteric highend systems built by Fujitsu and destined for simulating weather, nuclear explosions, and overpopulation.
These new servers absolutely rock, and at superb prices.
I once had the pleasure of a 4-way Opteron v40z with a development version of 64-bit Solaris 10. It was a screamer, especially compared to our 4-way Dell P4 Xeon box, and 64-bit.
It was plenty fast enough to host 4 zones and several developers working on KDE, gcc and all manner of other stuff.
At last, Sun looks like it's turning the corner (despite the best efforts of some of its PHBs - no names mentioned).
Good luck Sun.
Stick Men
Anandtech has a quick review of the X2100 up. Fairly standard, but well designed server it looks like. The big news is the entry level one for only $745. True it doesn't come with a HD, but that's still a hell of a deal for a true server (not a dell desktop box lets call it a server).
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Hasn't Sun had 64bit SPARC *and* AMD servers for quite some time now? (SPARC longer, obviously). This is like HP rolling out a new line of Proliant servers, no? Hardly news.
Woo!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Where bold insert Customer
That's simialr to Digital's downfall. They built some of the best computers in the world, thinking if we build it they will come. But it wasn't what the customers wanted. The same goes for catering to Wall Street. They want short term quick earnings growth; not necessarily long term custoemr growth. That may not be be conducive to achieving a product line that will last and the customers will even want.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Am I correct in assuming these lines will replace the v20z and v40z servers, which have very similar specs?
The v[24]0z servers were not manufactured by Sun themselves, and they've mentioned that they're working on their own version.
I love my v20z servers - they are a great alternative to the crap Dell calls 1U servers. I hope these are as good, and maybe a little better supported.
--onyx--
The all-new-sun-designed product is actually the Tyan K8E with a couple of parts removed.
Does this mean that Sun will get serious about supporting a good 64 bit java for these systems? Java systems application design could change radically if somebody can provide a 64 bit JVM that can process efficient garbage collection across very large java heap spaces.
The biggest problem I foresee for Sun in competing with Dell is simple, Suns don't run Windows and they don't run Linux. Dell makes nice, solid boxes, they're not imaginative by any stretch, but they work well and reliably and perform decently. One of the nice things that Dell does is that they quote you the price of the service contract in the initial purchase price for the system. Compare and contrast this with Sun and HP who basically say "service, hey, you bought it, the check cleared and if it stops working then come see us about a service contract (which we will charge you up the wazoo for)".
But back to that Windows thing, it's nice to be able to take a Dell and repurpose it from being a Linux system to a Windows system or vice versa. This helped me out this year with a project I was working on, the project was delayed and one of the Windows admins I worked with needed a new box PDQ. So I gave him my quad proc Dell which he put to good use right away and he ordered me a replacement off of his budget. In a mixed environment, which we're all working now, being able to do this is a major plus. If I buy a bunch of shiny new Suns not only am I locked into Solaris (which is painful to use after working on Linux for so many years) but I'm also locked into that hardware. If you have Suns already and want to stay with them then perhaps these systems make sense, but if you've started bringing Linux into your environment then why are you going to go back to Solaris?
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Let's hope that they run better than the W2100z workstations. Dual Opteron 250 processors and 16 gigs of RAM (at least the model that my company bought) and all we have had so far is horrendous problems.
4 BIOS updates later and the problems have dwindled a bit but we constantly get BSP error messages on boot up and random DIMM error messages during POST (on both sockets and chips that have been thoroughly tested and known to be good). Daughter processor cards have been bad as well (already replaced 4 in a batch of 40 which, according to Sun is "acceptable rate of failure").
Their latest BIOS update (version R01_B4_S2, released last month) does resolve the frequency of some of these errors but now we have machines that lock up on that BIOS release but not previous ones.
I only post this because the chips are Opteron 250s by AMD (64-bit) and the main board is another AMD.
Based on my experience with these workstations I wouldn't touch anything put out by Sun until they can get a quality control department set up and running anything with AMD chips.
True. (TM)
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
of how silly Sun's logo is
And hopefully the Galaxy boxes are the first step. I'd really like to see an UltraSPARC IVi chip in a Socket 940 package with hypertransport that would just drop into the Galaxy servers. That would indicate to me that Sun has finally climbed back on the clue train. Other than potentially being a vehicle for generating patents, Niagara and Rock don't look all that interesting to me. If we charitably assume that Niagara actually has specrate numbers that are 8 times as fast as the UltraSPARC IIIi, that only puts them in the same ballpark as a dual Opteron 275, and the Opteron boxes are shipping now.
Sun also offers full technical support for Microsoft Windows on their hardware. See this for more info.
(follows link)
**head explodes**
Suns don't run Windows and they don't run Linux
Actually, these new machines run Solaris, Linux and Windows - they are even on WHQL. They are the second-gen of Sun's AMD based x86-64 machines, and there were some intel x86-32 based systems before that, so arguably they are on their 3d or 4th gen of machines which can run Windows, if you like.
Compare and contrast this with Sun and HP who basically say "service, hey, you bought it, the check cleared and if it stops working then come see us about a service contract (which we will charge you up the wazoo for)".
Sun always quotes multiple service contract prices right there on the web page when you order the hardware (different levels of service).
The story of the year isn't Sun, HP or Dell servers. The story is definitely AMD. A week doesn't go by when we don't hear about AMD being on the warpath.
Its about time.
It seems that our world is dominated by only one CPU: the Intel-like ones.
HP (formerly Compaq, formerly Digital) definitely buried the Alpha RISC CPU roadmap. As well as its own HP/PA (another RISC corpse).
It is not clear whether IBM's PowerPC architecture will have a future other than the one in the gaming consoles with the Cell Architecture, now that even Apple is jumping onto the x86 cart.
Sun is throwing its SPARC technology ot of the window as we can read in the above announcement.
Lack of diversity will lead to a slow down in the overall computing technology evolution.
But there is still some hope, as declared into the The Book of Mozilla, 7:15(Only availabe to selected believers).
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
This must be some miracle machine. From the linked article..
The two hard drives can be setup for RAID 0, 1 or 10 via the BIOS.
Now, it may be a few years since I took classes in college that touched on various RAID levels, but one thing that I DO remember is that RAID 10 requires a minimum of 4 physical drives...
Sun's AMD Opteron server do Run Windows and Linux.
Sun's x64 servers are on the Windows Hardware Compatability List (HCL). Sun support is also available for Sun x64 systems running Windows.
Sun has been a reseller of Red Hat Linux for some time now.
Sun has done benchmarks on its x64 servers running both Linux and Windows for some time now.
"servers represent the company's bid to woo customers, particularly the financial industry sector, away from rival server vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell."
So these severs will be faster then most intel based processors with a lower price tag?
Didn't think so.
TruePunk | Games
Seriously, we all know Sparc is 64-bit, has been for some time. Most of us also know that they've dabbled in the Opteron processors not very long ago, and that these new servers are probably all Opterons.
If not, maybe you shouldn't be reading Slashdot. It's too technical for you. Go read C|Net.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
InfoWorld also got an early look at the X4100, though the review doesn't specify that model number because it hadn't even been announced yet. The price tag is ten times more than that of the X2100 the parent mentions, but as far as I understand it, the X2100 is pretty much an Asian white-box system. It's the X4100 and X4200 systems, a 1U and 2U respectively, that are Sun's new flagship custom designs. The big news is that InfoWorld's reviewers actually seem to have some fairly complementary things to say about them, which hasn't always been the case for Sun's AMD hardware in the past.
Breakfast served all day!
Most shops out there have had to select a vendor of X86 based systems quite some time ago. I wonder what Sun thinks is compelling enough about these servers to get people to switch. Compaq's proliant servers have been around forever and come in Xeon and Opteron flavors. I think Sun's service is far better than IBM or HPaq's, but I doubt that their hardware is any better than the other X86 server vendors that have a lot of history with the platform.
This isn't surprising. These systems really aren't more than a souped-up x86 server that are tweaked to Sun's specifications. But realistically, this can give Sun a broader appeal even to non-Solaris people as well as a larger installation base.
:)
For example, one of the Windows admins here got a 1U loaner Sun box running Windows {something} Server. (I don't remember which specific version.) He was very impressed by the speed and stability(!!!) of the system. Being a Sun admin for over 10 years, I, of course, had to bust his chops about the Sun logo on the box and "upgrading to a better operating system." That's when he told me that it ran Windows.
They have a great marketing opportunity: a highly-optimized system that can run not one, not two, but three operating systems! Not only that, it will run all three of them well! Sun also gives a three-year warranty on their hardware. Most of the other systems that I've seen require you to pay extra for a 3-year contract.
Although I know that many will look at this as "moving to the Dark Side", I don't see a problem with this personally. It gets Sun in front of people that otherwise would not have looked at their hardware. Maybe - just maybe - that will help to broaden Sun's customer base, which can only help in the long run if Sun plays their marketing cards correctly. After all, their current business model is to sell the hardware, but they'll be glad to throw in the OS for free. So, they're not looking to make money off the Windows install. They're looking to make money because they got a sale that otherwise would have gone to HP/Dell/other.
Who knows? In the future as hardware progresses such admins might say, "Well, we have this Sun box that doesn't really do anything now. Let's download Solaris and see what it's like." Of course, I'd rather have them say, "Hey, you want this? We don't use it anymore..."
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
A quick glance at the specs shows no USB 2.0, just 1.1
That's fine for kbd and mouse, but nothing else. On a server what are they good for?
Trio of Sun Fire systems are first of 'Galaxy' class machines ..Its mission, to take system admins where no system admins have ever gone before.
I work at a small ISP, about 10k users.
We had a sunfire as a mail server for about 3 years then went to upgrade the disk space last year and a 75gb drive was $4000. Proprietary isn't worth it.
Sigs are awesome huh?
This guy is wrong about everything. Many others have pointed out how these new Suns are all AMD Opteron x86-64 based and have been certified to run Windows and Linux, as well as Solaris. That invalidates 2/3 of the post. Even the other 1/3 is wrong too. Sun says they were distracted by the dot com boom. He calls this revisionism saying that Sun was guilty of hyping the dot com boom. How is this revisionism? That's exactly what Sun is saying as well. Sun is saying they made a mistake in trying to be "the dot in dot com" and should have instead paid more attention to what large corporate customers wanted: cheaper, standardized hardware that could run multipler operating systems.
Seriously, this post should be quoted in Wikipedia as a perfect example of a troll.
A friend of mine who works for Sun said they got the internal message this morning that this was on the way and that they'll come with Windows on em. "Why?", I asked, to which he replied that the talk around the office is that Sun will be focussing on application software versus OS and Hardware. He also said that airplanes with banners would be circling the skies of Austin this afternoon. Either way I'm curious.
We bought 5 of the V20z as soon as they appeared, and have loved them. I am impressed with them, even though I have heard that Sun did not build them. Running the latest linux kernel from SuSE, and have yet to make them break a sweat. I think it is about time Sun got exited about something. Even if they give up ultraSPARC, they hired the guy from AMD who helped develop the Opteron x86-64, and would seem to me that it would be in their best interest in capitalizing on the investment. It would be nice to see someone other than Dell and HP in this arena. Remember once again, the Sun was one of the first with 64bit technology, and they were also one of the first, if not the first, to offer Opteron servers.
Maybe they will lead again...
Go ahead, Toot your horn Sun!!! Keep making these good decisions!!
By now everybody knews about these servers. The real news is the Niagara CPUs that are finally coming out, with 6 and 8 cores. And yes, that's 64 bit SPARC cores - just to reply to those that were speculating on Sun giving up SPARC in favor of Opterons.
Niagara is much more server-oriented, while Opterons are more adequate for workstations and some types of server workload. But Niagara is much mroe suited for typical web serving and database hosting.
Sigged!
For one simple reason: they won the race. The idea of RISC is that when you have simpler instructions, they execute faster than more complex intructions.
Considering that the recent CPUs from Intel execute rather complex actions, for instance the simultaneous add and multiply of four floating point values, in a single clock cycle, there isn't much that RISC can improve on.
In the end, RISC may have been a good idea once, but it couldn't keep up with the competition. Sure, there are still RISC chips being made and promise of more to come. But the whole concept is dying a slow and painful death.
Lack of diversity will lead to a slow down in the overall computing technology evolution.
Not necessarily. For a counter example, about 25 years ago there was a memory chip technology called "magnetic bubles", which were a competitor to the magnetic disks of the time. Magnetic bubble chips disappeared long ago, but the mechanical hard disk technology keeps evolving at a rapid pace.
There are some points where one technology is clearly superior to another that has a theoretical advantage in some way. This theoretical advantage may be insufficient to overcome other shortcomings.
From what I have read about the Apple decision to drop PowerPC, it seems that RISC consumes significantly more power than Intel chips when delivering the same performance. I assume Apple management did enough studies on this before making a decision that could mean life or death to their company, to conclude that this problem, or whatever it was the reason that made them switch, is inevitable in practice.
The last project named Galaxy (at least the last one I remember), was when Sun decided to support multiprocessing in the early 90's. Asymetrical multiprocessing that it. There was a joke runniing around at the time thet went comething like:
"How do you make your Sun server run at 1/4 speed?"
"Add 3 more processors"
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
There is a small plane that has been flying around and around the Dell campus with a huge banner saying " Sun has x64 servers...WATCH OUT DELL! Its funny...the plane has been flying around for well over an hour now.
HP have been selling 64bit x86 with 64GB RAM for a long time.
Nothing new.
Disclaimer: I run mostly Linux at home, alongside a couple of OpenBSD machines. At work, Linux and Solaris x86. IMHO what Sun should do is stop treating Gnu software like orphans and make all the Gnu tools -- not just gcc -- easy to install, preferably installed by default.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
My server fell onto a concrete floor and now it's about a thousand bits.
V20Z are ok for the datcentre, atrocious outside of it. Remote takeover capabilities anyone?!?
Here in Austin and someone had rented a plane and was flying over the Dell RR5 building with a banner that said:
"Watch out Dell, Sun X64 server is coming!"
Weird!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Maybe they could retrofit one to fit the just as modern Pontiac Sunfire?
I saw this flash ad advertising the new product line on CNET today:
"Given how hot and slow our competitors servers are, It's not suprise their name RHYMES WITH HELL"
Pretty brutal, but funny.
I've been watching it...it's small, slow, and way too underpowered. I'm afraid it's going to crash any second. The plane's pretty weak, too.
They were definitely preceeded by the DEC Alpha.
I noticed in the Austin newspaper today, in the business section, that Sun is going to be hiring planes to fly banners around advertising these. One, which is apparently going to fly around austin, will say something along the lines of "Thanks, AMD!" The other, which is apparently going to circle Round Rock, will say "Watch out, Dell!" I don't have the paper in front of me, so the wording may not be exact.
Should have gotten an iPod Nano...
According to the datasheet, the Galaxy has 2 front USB 2.0 ports, 4 rear USB 2.0 ports, for a total of 6 USB 2.0 ports.
The datasheet also mentions that it has a 64-bit PCI-Express slot. Very impressive.
uh...you mean like the entire Cray XT3 line that scales from 1 to over 30,000 processors. Granted this is a pseudo cluster but that is generally what all big iron is now-a-days.
5 _cray.html
http://www.psc.edu/publicinfo/news/2004/2004-10-2
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
"Signs Point To Yes"
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Check this out. Opteron workstation for $1K. They were running a promo where you could get one for something like $29.95/mo for three years, not sure if that's still on.
Just junk food for thought...
Apples business was less than 2% of IBMs output for their Power chips. It has a long future ahead of it and is doing fine...better now that they do not have to satisfy Apple's design targets.
As for the sordid history of PA-RISC and Alpha. Well, HP and Intel got into an agreement to develop Itanium. HP did much of the work (billions went into Itanium development and marketing) and when it came time they switched from PA-RISC to Itanium. Also, when HP and Compaq merged, HP killed Alpha for obvious reasons (it kicked Itaniums ass).
Sparc is still going with Fujitsu being Suns partner.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
A Netcraft survey shows most Fortune 100 companies use Solaris, not MS Windows. Also, remember, one Solaris server typically equals several MS Windows servers (a server farm or farms).
USB is for consumer use (cameras, mice, etc.). You can't have external USBs hanging off rack mounted servers. The Galaxy series have SATA hard drives, up to 2, that are hot-pluggable and RAID-ed for reliability and replacement.
Not to ruin a real kneeslapper, but the Sun 600MP systems (codenamed "Galaxy" as you say) were symmetric MP, not asymmetric.
Even under SunOS 4.x, which did not have a multithreaded kernel, the kernel would not be bound to a specific processor, nor was there any performance differences associated with processes being scheduled on different processors.
Under 4.x your performance gains would come from running multiple processes simultaneously rather than running a single process on multiple processes, but this still didn't add up to seeing a performance degradation of any kind by adding CPUs.
Once Solaris 2.x came out, the true performance benefits of the 600MP came into play with a multithreaded kernel and the ability to build true multithreaded applications.
The underlying sun4m processor bus architecture lived on in Sun desktop systems long after the 600MP line was superseded, and was quite effective for 4-way and smaller MP systems.
I have a photo on my blog (photo is not from Sun) of a plane buzzing Dell HQ that says: "Sun's got a x64 server. Watch out Dell!"
I knew that OpenPROM is crazilly powerful, but it has a Doom/Quake engine in it now? Kick ass.
The big 6xxMP cabinets are still awesome if you can find dual 200MHz Ross Hypersparc mbus modules that are compatible.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
Not to beat a dead horse.. I had a Sun 490 (before galaxy) that was up for over a year. It finally was brought down by a backhoe to the power line. I've had newer Sun servers that only were brought down for new OS loads - they'd have run forever.
Sun makes bulletproof hardware - glad to see them churning up the AMD server space.
The TFA does not discuss what exactly is the difference between these new boxes and Sun's older Opteron offerings, V20z and V40z.
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
2Billion in R&D - and a using an Opteron is the best they can come up with? How much better will this be than a Tyan motherboard stuffed in a 'white box' server chasis?
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I think many of the negative comments about Sun have been made off the cuff and only echo the popular opinions of the ill-informed. I do not have a close friend at Sun but I am a system admin for several hundred Sun servers of various sizes. To give you an idea of the size of our relationship with Sun, all of our devices are on platinum contract and parts are replaced within a few hours. With the exception of a bad batch of memory (made by Hitachi) things have been great.
Many people believe that Sun hardware is expensive and there is some truth to that. Mainly because Sun has been around a while. They come from a time when hardware and software of their type was less prevalent, the type of offerings reserved for major universities and Fortune 100 companies. Then companies like Dell got involved in the server market and things have had to change quickly. Sun (albeit a bit slow to respond) have made some huge changes in both their software and hardware. Their changes in Solaris 9 and 10 have been fairly dramatic. They are shifting away from the old crusty Solaris and adding integration with many popular open source projects. Their hardware platform is shifting from expensive parts to cheaper more efficient parts. As an owner of a AMD64 3200 running 64bit Linux/GNU, I can personally say that AMD's offerings in the 64bit market have Intel in a tough spot. AMD has been at the 64bit party for a few years now, waiting on Intel to show up.
Sun's profit was 4.5 billion last year and they have 3.4 billion in cash. Not too shabby.
To the person that said Sun has had 64bit for a while, that is true but I think the sparc64 has nothing on what AMD has out now. Plus, Sun didn't have a mid-range 64bit offering then like they do now.
Why am I defending Sun? I don't know, I feel like a lot of the negative comments are from people that have never really used a real Sun product (SunRays and Sparc Stations do not count). I guess that kinda makes Sun the Apple of the server market, but I draw no comparison concerning innovation.