Sun Microsystems unveiled its four new "midframe" Sun Fire servers today, incorporating mainframe technology into second-tier servers.
Stefano Mattiello, MD of Sun Microsystems SA, says these systems will redefine the profile of traditional midrange servers, and also "radically [shift] the economics of availability".
The machines are built around the UltraSPARC III processor, Sun's third-generation 64-bit chip, and Sun's Solaris 8 Operating Environment.
The redundant Sun Fireplane interconnection (also known as the backplane) enables fault-isolated partitioning and dynamic partitioning in a production environment.
Sun says its cable-free design gives the Sun Fireplane interconnect greater bandwidth for more predictable performance and lower latency. At 9.6GBps sustained performance, the Sun Fireplane interconnect offers nearly five times the throughput of IBM's P680 system, according to the IT system vendor.
The Sun Fire architecture offers online upgradability, with hot CPU upgrades, I/O (input/output) and memory upgrades, and the ability to modify core components of the Solaris Operating Environment. In addition, the systems allow for concurrent maintenance, enabling repairs while the system and its applications are running.
All hardware components - from data and memory paths, system controller and power, to cooling and the clock - are fully redundant, in effect delivering systems with no single point of hardware failure.
The Sun servers also feature end-to-end ECC (error checking correction code) for parity checking on data, address and external cache.
"As a leader of technology, we are continually delivering leading-edge products in support of our stated strategy to provide massive scalability, reduced complexity and continuous availability - all critical for businesses to run successfully in the e-business global market," says Mattiello.
The new systems are shipping today.
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