We received a couple of the Sun Fire T2000's. They were slated for deployment at our datacenter, so I had a great chance for some hands on experience with the new machines.
Solid and clean - its a theme that repeats itself from the packaging to the machine. The boxes are solid - no need for me to worry about how they will do in the back of my truck. The rail kit and cable management are packaged in the same clean way.
After removing the machine and laying it on the staging cart, we took some time to admire the design and look it over. The LEDs on the front are nice. The power button is interesting. You need a stylus (or similar item) to press it. That's not a concern since most of us have the Treo phones. When you do press the power button, the fans fire off revving and then quiet down (a nice audio confirmation.)
We needed to install a card ... and it took less than a minute. No screwdrivers needed. Simply press the button (located in the lower center of this picture) and lift the cover. We could have done it quicker but we spent some time checking out the insides. Clean. Nice cable management. (If you look at the inside view shot, they've actually moved the SATA cables to the side for the picture). Lots of RAM. 
There's a lever that holds the slot cover, so simply swinging the lever enabled us to pull the cover out. We popped the card in, which fit perfectly. Swing back the lever and the card is locked in place. How sweet is that! I found myself staring dumbly at the screwdriver in my hand. At one point Will reached in and plucked out a fan - very nifty.
Datacenter deployment was simple as well. The rail mounting brackets simply snapped on. Sweet! The rails had a spacer tool which took a couple of minutes to figure out, but works very nicely. The only time I used a screwdriver was for putting the rails on the rack. There's no need to screw the server into place once installed - it simply snaps and locks into place. The really nifty item is the cable management kit. It mounts on the back and extends and folds out when you pull the machine forward, preventing your cables from being snagged or pulled out. And when you are wiring the machine, the arm can be released to swing out for easy cable installation. Schaweet! You can check out the Sun Fire T2000 Server Installation Guide for some nifty diagrams.
Additional info:
» Tags: SUN, CoolThreads, Servers, Datacenter
| Comments [1] : Permalink | Published: (2006-01-27 06:05:00.0) |
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Posted by al on January 27, 2006 at 07:10 AM PST #