The Official Site for Breaking News and the Latest Information from Sun On The Record

Yesterday, the EPA published its new Energy Star for Servers spec . Yes, it's the same Energy Star first introduced in 1992 and used on all sorts of consumer products like kitchen appliances, lighting and home electronics. We're ecstatic that energy-efficiency is finally becoming a more transparent piece of the tech sector.

Customers now have a baseline against which to accurately measure and compare the energy-efficiency of servers on the market. In the long run, the Spec will enable customers to reduce their energy consumption and overall carbon footprint. And that's a good thing.

Listen to our own energy-efficiency guru Subodh Bapat, vice president of energy efficiency and Distinguished Engineer at Sun, talk about the Spec and what it means to Sun and our customers on Sun's Blog Talk Radio with host Chhandomay Mandal.

While still in its infancy, the Spec's first draft (Tier 1 it's called) focuses solely on idle power consumption – which is a great place to start but not exactly comprehensive. Let's put it this way: Measuring just idle power consumption is akin to trying to measure the most efficient car based on the gas it burns at a red light vs MPG on the highway.

So what happens now? Look for Sun to announce Energy Star compliant servers in the coming months. Then check out the next rev of the Spec (Tier 2) due out in October 2010. Sun has been actively involved with the EPA in developing and providing feedback on the spec and will continue to do so. We (and most other vendors) hope that the next rev will include performance per watt benchmarking, as well as take into account some of the energy saving innovations for which Sun is known - like multicore chips.

Our work with the EPA's Energy Star program is just one of the many ways Sun supports sustainability internally and externally.

Sun recently expanded its portfolio of solutions developed for mid-sized companies with the introduction of an Open Archive solution that pairs the Sun Storage 7110 and 7210 Unified Storage Systems and ultra-scalable Sun Fire X4140 and Sun Fire X4240 servers with industry-leading Symantec Enterprise Vault 8 software. The resulting Open Archive solution for mid-sized companies delivers tested and optimized storage and server configurations that make it easy for customers to very simply archive many different types of data, such as files/records, email, instant messaging and sharepoint content while ensuring data integrity. By using 4x less power and 1/2 the footprint, the Sun Open Archive Solution can significantly reduce storage costs, minimizing management complexity and increasing storage ROI.

Other major highlights:

- Lowers total storage costs by up to 90%*

- Reduces the amount of production and backup storage needed by up to 80%

- Simplifies deployment, administration and management

- Greatly improves your ability to search and discover archived information

For more information check out the Sun and Symantec Open Archive solution for mid-sized companies datasheet or visit http://www.sun.com/smb/archive.

* “Digital Archive Solution from Sun Protects United Kingdom’s Video Heritage,” British Board of Film Classification Customer Snapshot, Sun Microsystems, sun.com/customers/servers/bbfc.xml.

David Simmons, Director of Sun's mid-market business, discussed the Open Archive Solution with Sun News Radio host Chhandomay Mandal. Listen to the short segment below for the highlights.

Updating its x64 servers with the latest AMD Opteron technology, Sun has added new processors running at 2.9GHz to select x64 models including the Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4240 and Sun Fire X4440 servers.  The highly efficient 45nm processor can boost performance by to up 35 percent, compared to previous generation systems, while decreasing processor power consumption by up to 35 percent at idle.  Sun's AMD Opteron-based x64 systems offer a choice of OSes, including Solaris, Linux, Windows and VMware and deliver exceptional scalability, virtualization and consolidation capabilities with up to twice the storage, memory and I/O capacity. And, with prices starting at $2,289 (USD), they make ideal solutions for both the enterprise and the midmarket. For a free 60 day trial via Sun's Try and Buy Program visit http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy.

The Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor is designed to give mid-market businesses easy integration from dual- to quad-core computing to help them lower total cost of ownership, scale the performance of business applications and increase capacity - while minimizing costs to the IT infrastructure.  Check out these resources for more on Sun solutions for the midmarket:

* "Sun and AMD's Technology + Business - Sun Solutions for Mid-Sized Businesses" magazine
* "Business Benefits of Deploying Next-Generation IT in the Midmarket" - IDC whitepaper on how midmarket businesses can capitalize on new technology in competitive times.

For more information on Sun solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses check out http://www.sun.com/smb and Sun's x64 servers based on AMD-processor technology at http://www.sun.com/amd.

Last Fall, Sun came out with its first Intel-based Netra systems -- the Sun Netra X4250 and Sun Netra X4450 servers. The Sun Netra X4250 server, a 2U rackmount server powered by two high-performance LV quad-core Intel Xeon processors and the Sun Netra X4450 server, a 4U rackmount server and the industry's only carrier-grade server powered by four quad-core Intel Xeon processors bring high performance and datacenter efficiency to the telco market. In an effort to continue collaboration with Intel and optimize the entire development lifecycle, from concept to deployment, Sun recently joined Intel's Embedded and Communications Alliance (ECA).  Check out Sun's Netra line of servers which also includes the Sun Netra CP3250 ATCA blade server -- Sun's first eight-core, dual-socket Intel Xeon processor blade server optimized to run the most demanding, processor-intensive telco applications.

The Intel Embedded and Communications Alliance is one of the world's most recognized embedded and communications ecosystems providing customers with a trusted supply line of Intel-based products and services. Sun's participation in this alliance helps align Sun and Intel's technical development and continues the collaborative efforts between the two companies in designing next generation carrier-grade systems that meet industry needs.  Customers will see the added benefit of this alliance through next generation systems that will include the ultimate balance in performance, energy efficiency, and greater memory and I/O performance.

For more information on Sun's Netra solutions available through Intel's Embedded and Communications Alliance click here.

TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center) announced today that scientists and researchers using the Ranger supercomputer now have access to Spur, a state-of-the-art visualization resource based on the Sun Visualization System and Sun Fire x64 servers powered by AMD Opteron processors. Spur is the first of its kind to be so closely integrated with an HPC system as powerful as Ranger, according to TACC.

Spur allows researchers and scientists to visualize their data right away, even if they are working at a remote location. TACC users such as Stanford University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are using Spur for primary data analysis, improvement of code, and remote, real-time visualization of data.

In addition, since Spur’s master and visualization nodes are directly connected to the Sun Datacenter Switch 3456, which is the Infiniband network fabric of Ranger, users can directly access the high performance parallel file systems on Ranger.

To read the full story from TACC, click here.

Businesses looking to easily scale their email and expand their capabilities by running Microsoft Exchange 2007 can take a test drive on Sun's x64 servers and storage systems through Sun's free trial program.

Ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Microsoft Exchange 2007 running on Sun's x64 server and storage systems like the Sun Fire X4150 or Sun Fire X4250 servers and Sun Storage J4200 or Sun Storage J4400 arrays will increase performance and scalability while reducing risk and complexity within growing companies.

Some of the benefits:
- Save up to 37% on total cost of ownership
- Reduce hardware footprint by up to 87%
- Increase mailbox capacity by up to 156%

For more info, check out a whitepaper on how to migrate to Microsoft Exchange 2007 on Sun hardware and a datasheet on the overall benefits of the solution.

David Simmons, senior director, Mid-Market Business at Sun Microsystems talks about the Sun Microsoft Exchange Solution

Sun's Try and Buy Program allows businesses to test a Sun product free for 60 days.  After 60 days, you can either purchase the product at a discounted price of up to 40% or simply return it.  No risk or obligations. 

Hot on the heels of Infoworld's recognition of the Sun Fire x4150, SearchDataCenter today awarded the CMT-based SPARC Enterprise T5440 server a bronze in its 2008 Products of the Year Awards.

The write up on the system notes that it "packs enough memory and CPU power to deliver up to four times higher performance per watt at about one-fifth of competitive servers."  With up to 256 threads and 512 GB of memory in just 4 RU, the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server is an ideal platform for virtualization and consolidation and ably handles traditional midrange apps like Oracle databases, Siebel CRM and SAP ERP.

The SPARC Enterprise T5440 server has set seven world records on key enterprise and HPC benchmarks, including a world record on Oracle's Siebel CRM 8.0 PSPP benchmark. Supporting 14,000 concurrent Siebel CRM users, the T5440 server delivers not only serious compute density, but energy savings as well, consuming only 1,276 watts during the benchmark. More information on Siebel CRM on the T5440 is available here.

Sun Fire X4150 won Best 1U Server in InfoWorld's 2009 Technology of the Year awards announced this week.  Doug Dineley, executive editor at Infoworld's Test Center, summed up the selection of the Sun Fire X4150 saying, "The Sun Fire X4150 is a '2U' workhorse squeezed into a 1U chassis. Sporting two quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs, up to 64GB of RAM, and eight internal 2.5-inch 10K SAS drives, it's a monster of a system, blazing through database and Web-serving benchmarks in the lab. Even the little details are there, such as internal USB 2.0 ports (in addition to two in the front and two in the rear), redundant power supplies, four built-in gigabit Ethernet ports, and more. Thin is definitely in with the X4150."

In InfoWorld's Lab test results, Paul Venezia ran an array of real-world benchmark tests including bzip2 compression, md5sum, MySQL, and LAME MP3 encoding tests. He says "...The X4150 is priced similarly to other servers of comparable spec, yet offers storage and I/O capabilities generally found in 2U and larger systems – this not only saves on rack space, but given the relatively low power consumption of the X4150, it can save on power as well... In fact, the fit and finish of the X4150 are generally better than the rest of the field's and far ahead in local storage..."  Paul further goes onto say that the Sun Fire X4150 "provides significant bang for the buck" in database, Web serving and virtualization tasks.  "..All in all, it's a very real competitor to HP's ProLiant DL360 G5, IBM's x3550, and Dell's PowerEdge 1950 III."

The Sun Fire X4150 was recently paired with Sun's new virtualization solutions for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). The Sun Fire X4150 plus VMWare ESX offers maximum server utilization through 16 dual in-line memory modules (DIMMS) allowing for optimal performance of virtual machines.

For more info on the Sun Fire X4150 and how it can help increase your business performance check out http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/.

Today, the University of Zurich (UZH) announced they will be deploying a new supercomputer in late summer 2009, based on 576 Sun Blade servers powered by next-generation Intel® Xeon® processors (codenamed Nehalem). The supercomputer will be one of the most powerful computers ever to have been operated by a single university. If commissioned today, the new machine would be ranked approximately 50th on the Top500 list and would also be one of the largest high-performance computers in Switzerland. Today's announcement builds on other HPC deployments we announced at Supercomputing, which will also be based on the next-generation Intel Xeon processor.

The planned HPC cluster is unique due to its compact design, efficient QDR InfiniBand network, ingenious cooling system, fast and high-capacity storage systems and the fact that it uses the very latest generation of Intel CPUs. The cluster will also take advantage of the Lustre parallel file system.

The new supercomputer will be used to determine not only the behavior of individual molecules, but of entire molecular systems. The high-performance machine is anticipated in the fields of nanotechnology, systems biology, astrophysics, cosmology and physical chemistry; it will soon be possible, for example, to determine how planets, stars and galaxies emerge out of the so-called "primordial soup." The new supercomputer will also be the main technology used to interpret the findings of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).

In a single day, the 50-teraflop high-performance computer will be capable of performing processes that would take an individual PC 10 years. It will also facilitate other scientific calculations not possible using current computer equipment. The new supercomputer will offer performance levels 10 times higher than those of the three existing supercomputers.

If you've brushed up on your German recently, you can see the entire UZH press release here.  =)

For more information on Sun's HPC solutions, visit www.sun.com/hpc.

The Lustre file system was used for the rendering of a feature film that opens in theaters nationwide today. Guess the correct name of the movie, and you're eligible for a chance to win an AMC Gold Experience ticket, worth approximately $10. (Just a note, if you check the official rules -- Sun employees and their families are not eligible to enter. Sorry!) Just send an e-mail to Lustrefilm@sun.com with the name of the movie, along with your full name, title, company, mailing address, telephone number and email address. Correct answers will be entered into a drawing to be held on Monday. Four lucky winners will each receive a movie ticket. Full rules can be found here.

The Lustre file system redefines scalability and provides groundbreaking I/O and metadata throughput. For the company that used Lustre to render this movie -- in addition to special effects sequences in previous films -- Lustre helped them dramatically increase I/O performance, scalability and reliability. It also gave them double the storage, at less cost than competing solutions.

So, if you think you know the answer, or simply want to hazard a guess, make sure to send an e-mail to Lustrefilm@sun.com with the name of the movie, along with your full name, title, company, mailing address, telephone number and email address. The answer and more details will be revealed on Monday! Here's the legal stuff:

Disclosure: No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Open to legal residents of U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico) and Canada (excluding Quebec) 18 years or older. Entrants are responsible for complying with their employers' policies regarding acceptance of promotional items. Entries accepted from 12/19/2008 to 12/21/2008. Four (4) winners will receive one (1) AMC Gold Experience™ Ticket ($10 USD). For complete Official Rules, visit http://blogs.sun.com/ontherecord/resource/Lustre_blog_SweepsRules_12-18-08.pdf. Sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

When Sun unveiled the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server in October, one of the seven benchmarks on the system was a record setting result of 14,000 users on Oracle's Siebel CRM Release 8.0 Platform Sizing and Performance Program (PSPP). As enterprise customers continue to look to reduce energy consumption, consolidate their applications and cut costs overall, it's this magnitude of scalability in just a 4 RU package that sets the standard.

The Sun Optimized Oracle CRM Solution supports up to 2x more CRM users in about 1/3 the space and at 1/4 of the cost of other platforms. It brings together the performance, scalability and energy efficiency of the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server, the Solaris OS, Sun's Open Storage technologies and Oracle Siebel CRM 8 to provide an ideal platform for improving customer loyalty with better performance, space savings and reduced energy consumption. 

Upgrade today to the SPARC Enterprise T5440 and save 40%.

MORE RESOURCES

-Sun Optimized Oracle CRM Solution Brief 

-Sun Optimized Oracle CRM Solution Blueprint

-Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Press Release 

Sun partner Zeus Technology threw down a price/performance lightning bolt announcing that its Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager (ZXTM) software running on Sun's SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5140 servers delivers the highest price/performance and scalability across any server platform, based on the latest industry standard throughput tests.

Commenting on the achievement, Sohrab Modi, vice president, Advanced Technologies, at Sun said: “Today's announcement by Zeus confirms the exemplary performance of their application delivery on our SPARC CMT Enterprise servers. The overall value of the Zeus/Sun solution highlights Sun's continued commitment to helping customers derive superior price performance benefits."

More information on Zeus' ZXTM running on SPARC Enterprise servers is available here.

Zeus' press release is here.

Howdy, ya’ll. This has been a busy week for Sun at the annual Supercomputing (SC08) conference, located in Austin, Texas, this year. We started things off on Monday night with John Fowler, EVP of Sun’s Systems Group, accepting an award commemorating Sun’s 20th appearance at Supercomputing – going back to the very first SC show in Orlando.

On Monday during the show's opening gala, HPCwire also did a short podcast with John to get an overview of Sun's presence at SC08. Take a listen.

On Tuesday, we made three announcements -- highlighting some exciting customer deployments, announcing new products, and claiming that 9 of the top 10 supercomputers on the TOP500 list use Sun Storage technologies. Check out the SC08 press kit to see these press releases, hear podcasts about Sun’s activities at the show, and more.

On Wednesday, I took some time to chat with Bjorn Andersson, director, HPC marketing, to get his perspective on the show and the new Sun Compute Cluster and Sun Storage Cluster.

Overall, an exciting show for Sun! See ya'll at SC09 in Portland.

John Fowler (left) shows off the new Sun Storage 7000 "Amber Road" family at SC08.

IDC names Sun leader in Tape Storage Automation!

Sun has reclaimed its position as the leading vendor of total tape automation according to IDC's recent Branded Tape Report. Hot off the back of Sun’s Amber Road Unified Storage 7000 Series launch, the second quarter's worldwide tape systems results highlight Tape as a strategic tier of storage for data protection and archive. Success is also due to the recent launch of Sun’s SL3000 midrange tape library which improved overall storage results and signaled a strong return to market space. Midrange and enterprise customers are faced with the increasing challenge of balancing rapid data growth, spiraling energy costs and lengthier data retention periods with flat IT budgets . In the current economic climate, Sun's open, tiered approach to storage and innovative design is helping customers large and small achieve record performance and cost gains.

For more information, see  sun.com/unifiedstorage