Sun launches cost-conscious x86 servers for clouds

11:45 am ET April 20, 2009 - Sun Microsystems' announcement last week came before the business deal last weekend that led to the absorption of Sun by Oracle. Most noteworthy from Monday morning's joint conference call with Oracle and Sun management was that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison characterized the deal as a software acquisition. Though the fact that Sun makes servers was mentioned (Oracle does now as well), that fact wasn't high on anyone's list this morning. And because no questions were taken from the press, we don't actually know the fate of the Sun Fire server lineup that Jacqueline Emigh covered just late last week.

Sun's new x86 hardware is designed to bring speed, simplicity, and "obviously savings, [as we] deliver the same application performance as before," said Sun CTO John Fowler, in a rollout this week at Sun's North American Partner Summit in Las Vegas.

Sun's latest Fire servers and blade systems support not just the Sun Solaris OS but also Windows and Linux. The hardware also works with virtualization solutions from multiple vendors, including VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Sun's own xVM Ops Center and Solaris Containers.

The Xeon 5500-enabled hardware includes four Fire servers -- the X4170, X2270, and X4275 servers, for the enterprise and Web, and the X4270, for branches offices and horizontally scaled data centers -- along with two server modules: the virtualization-oriented X6270, and the quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand-driven X6275, for high performance computing (HPC). The X6275 departs from tradition with a dual-node blade architecture, allowing two complete servers to share a single server module.

In addition to working with the OS and virtualization software that companies already have, the blade systems also support multi-vendor hardware, since the existing 6000 blade chassis is able to accommodate Sun Sparc processors as well as x86 processors from both Intel and AMD.

With the X6275, Sun is also introducing a new chassis, the 6048, which builds the chassis directly into the rack for higher density.

Analysts agreed on the cost-saving potential of Sun's latest servers. By supporting multiple virtualization technologies, Sun is giving customers a range of choice in the use of virtualization for reducing bottlenecks, consolidating servers, and gaining "better control of applications on a single server," suggested Kenneth Clayton, an IDC analyst.

"Systems that are underutilized are being looked at to understand how to better make use of server investments. One solution is to increase usage through virtualization and consolidation," according to Clayton. "This results in fewer systems with a smaller footprint and lower energy costs."

Also in the interests of lower energy costs, Sun unveiled a new local cooling option called the Sun Cooling Door, available in two flavors, noted Gordon Haff, an Illuminata analyst.

"One flavor, the Sun Cooling Door 5600, uses R134A refrigerant and is compatible with Liebert SD pumping and chiller units. In this case, water is still only piped to the datacenter chillers: refrigerant lines then connect to the rack," according to Haff. "The Sun Cooling Door 5200 is a straight chilled-water version. It connects to water sources in either the floor or the ceiling, and is intended primarily for data centers that can simply and cost effectively extend an existing chilled-water system."

For now, only Sun's 6048 rack/chassis supports the Sun Cooling Door. But Sun also plans to extend the new cooling system to other blade enclosures.

Sun also expects to offer its Netra systems with Xeon 5500 processors later this year, Sun officials said during the launch.