Sun's Opteron servers sport new design

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DENI CONNOR ON SERVERS
09/13/05
Today's focus: Sun's Opteron servers sport new design

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Sun expects new servers to boost sales
* Links related to Servers
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Sun's Opteron servers sport new design

By Deni Connor

Sun this week is touting what it calls a "blockbuster family of
industry-standard, x64 enterprise-class systems" that the
company expects to boost Sun's share of the x86 server market.

The company is introducing three new Opteron-based servers that
it claims are faster and consume less power than other Opterons
on the market today. The Sun Fire X2100, X4100 and X4200 are
dual-core servers that were designed by Sun co-founder Andy
Bechtolsheim
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/0408sunoutli.html?rl>.
Bechtolsheim had left Sun to found Kealia, which was developing
advanced server technology, and then Sun acquired Kealia last
year.

The new servers are the first Opteron-based servers to use a new
architecture. In the servers, drives and processors are aligned
on one side of the enclosure, power supplies on the other. Air
flows in the front of the server over the disk drives and
processors and out the back.

Sun claims that as a result of this design that the servers are
able to operate at one-third the power and one-and-a-half times
the performance of four-way Intel Xeon-based servers from Dell.
The company boasts that the servers are available at half the
cost of Dell servers.

With the servers Sun hopes to establish some market share for
x86 servers.

"Sun seems to be even with relatively plain off-the-shelf
systems," says Gordon Haff, senor analyst for Illuminata. "These
are clearly more advanced, more fully featured servers than what
they have been selling, so it should improve their position in
the market."

IDC shows Sun holding almost 9% of the x86 market in 2004,
behind IBM, Dell and HP.

The servers, which run Windows, Solaris and Linux, include the
rack-mounted X2100, a single socket server; the X4100 two-socket
four-way server and the X4200 server. Sun will use this design
for future
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/080105-sun-sparc.html?rl>
eight-way to 16-way dual-core servers.

In addition, the servers have built-in lights-out management
capability, which allows IT to remotely administer them, reboot
them and load the BIOS.

The fans and power supplies are hot-swappable, allowing IT to
replace them as the server is running.

The X2100 starts at $745, followed by the X4100 for $2,200 and
the X4200 for $2,600. They come pre-installed with Solaris 10.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. McAfee, Tech Assist top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6971>

2. What's the best way to protect against spyware?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6972>

3. Google hacking <http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6692>

4. Supermarket chain freezes Internet access
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6645>

5. Cisco warns of another IOS bug
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6794>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Deni Connor

Deni Connor is a Senior Editor at Network World covering
storage, Unix, Novell, Macintosh and IT in Healthcare. You can
reach her at <mailto:dconnor@nww.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Tacit
Network World Executive Guide: Staying Focused on the Moving
Target that is Storage

Keeping pace with evolving storage strategies, architectures,
and trends is not unlike keeping pace with your organizations
underlying capacity needs. From ILM strategies to SAN management
to the threat of those USB memory sticks, this Network World
Executive Guide will help you stay focused on the moving target
that is Storage. Register now and get a free copy of Network
World's Storage Executive Guide.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=114184
_______________________________________________________________
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE

GARTNER'S SECURITY HYPE-O-METER

What is hype and has it influenced your network security
efforts? At a recent Gartner security summit, analysts described
what they say are "The Five Most Overhyped Security Threats,"
risks that have been overblown and shouldn't be scaring everyone
as much as they seem to be. For more, click here:

<http://www.networkworld.com/weblogs/security/009180.html>
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