Sun SPARC Enterprise M-class service processor firmware release XCP 1041 is now available to download:
I was looking at the product notes for XCP 1041, and it's not obvious what new features are in XCP 1041, so here's a quick summary of what's new:
- Capacity on demand: If you're not familiar with COD, let me summarize by saying that you can get a CPU/Memory Unit (CMU) at a low up-front cost, but not pay the rest until you actually need and use the CPUs and memory. For example, you could buy an M5000 server with four CPUs and get four extra COD CPUs. Normally, you'd use the system with four CPUs. But if you needed more compute capacity, you could call up Sun, buy a license to add another CPU, enter the license key, and then power on the CPU and use it. No boards to install. No downtime. Just enable the CPU and go. We've had this feature for the Sun Fire 3800-6900 and 12K-25K, and now it's available on the M-class servers. I don't think the SPARC Enterprise COD info is posted on sun.com yet, but here's a link to the Sun Fire COD web page.
- External I/O Expansion Unit: XCP 1041 includes full support for the Sun External I/O Expansion Unit (during development, we just called it "IO Box" for short). This 4RU chassis can connect to a host PCI-Express slot, and gives you six additional PCI-Express or PCI-X slots. Since the link connecting the IO Box and the host is fibre optic, the IO Box can be in the next rack, or across the room. The IO Box product isn't shipping yet, so I'll probably do a full blog posting when it does ship.
If you're going to download and install XCP 1041, you'll want to read the product notes about getflashimage. I'll write a separate posting about that.