New Sun Blade Systems Get a Sharper Edge

On June 6, 2007, Sun released a new generation of blade servers with rackmount computing capabilities — the Sun Blade 6000 family. The family launches with three server modules running SPARC, AMD Opteron, and Intel Xeon processors.

To find out how this new hardware offering provides new levels of computing firepower while saving costs in the datacenter, Sun Inner Circle caught up with Ali Alasti, vice president of engineering of the Sun Systems Group, who has spent much of this year preparing the blades for launch.

INNER CIRCLE (IC): Why should an enterprise consider Sun Blade 6000 systems over rackmounted servers?

ALASTI: These new Sun Blade server modules have all the advantages of today's blade systems (higher MTBF, or mean time between failures, lower TCO, etc.) without compromising performance measured in processor power, memory capacity, and I/O bandwidth — tradeoffs many customers have not been willing to make so far. Each of the three members of the Sun Blade 6000 family have comparable or better performance and can be deployed faster and more cost-effectively than their rackmount equivalents. Plus, this family of servers is the only open blade platform capable of supporting UltraSPARC, AMD Opteron, and Intel Xeon processors in the same chassis, which gives our customers the flexibility to choose the right solution for their environments.

IC: So how do these new Sun Blade server modules stack up to competing blades?

ALASTI: It’s all about offering the absolute performance and competitive price/performance to make blades a viable part of the datacenter. The Sun Blade 6000 systems simply have much more CPU power, higher memory capacity, and I/O capability than competing blades. And unlike other blades, the Sun Blade 6000 systems use flexible, hot plug industry-standard PCI Express based I/O, which other blade systems do not offer. All of this offers more performance and greater flexibility at a lower cost to our customers.

IC: What kinds of enterprises are these systems designed for?

ALASTI: Many of our customers deploy their systems in groups of 10s to 100s, considering price, performance, and ease of integration and management. These customers would also like to be able to add capacity easily and cost-effectively going forward. Many enterprises are looking to consolidate their older equipment in order to gain efficiency in performance and power consumption. The Sun Blade server modules are the ideal platform for these customers.

IC: So which member of the Sun Blade 6000 family is best suited for thread-intensive workloads?

ALASTI: Our CoolThreads-based blade, the Sun Blade T6300 server module, has been designed to provide maximum power efficiency for thread-intensive workloads. Think of it as a Sun Fire T2000 server, in half the form factor. Performance-wise, this blade, featuring CoolThreads technology, comes with an UltraSPARC T1 CMT (chip multithreading) processor with up to 32 GB of memory as well as immense I/O output, ideal for Web services, Java technology, and database applications.

IC: Where would I look if I were in the market for a blade designed for high-performance x64 computing?

ALASTI: Then you would probably be looking at our two-socket AMD Opteron offering, which is very much like a Sun Fire X4100 rackmount system — but on a blade. Called Sun Blade X6220 server module, this blade is ideal for high-performance computing applications with industry-leading floating point performance. Sun Blade X6220 module is scalable, designed to be forward compatible with future quad-core chips.

IC: But say I need a datacenter workhorse for Web and application tiers based on x64 technology. Which member of the Sun Blade 6000 family would fit best?

ALASTI: I would suggest our Intel Xeon blade, Sun Blade X6250 server module. This two-socket Intel Xeon system has been designed for highest performance single-threaded applications, such as Web and application tiers. With the potential to scale up to 64 GB, Sun Blade X6250 module is perfectly matched for applications that can benefit from large caches. Plus, this blade supports both quad- and dual-core Intel Xeon processors, providing up to eight cores of high performance computing per blade.

IC: Are there any advantages to using these blades to integrate with existing hardware and storage systems?

ALASTI: These blades use the existing PCI Express industry standard for I/O. Customers can simply tap into the ecosystem of existing hardware and storage systems built for this standard without having to worry about the costs associated with using proprietary I/O cards. Sun believes in using open technologies and standards and has decided to adopt this open I/O standard, which is already proven in the rackmount market.

IC: In what other ways do members of the Sun Blade 6000 family cut IT management costs?

ALASTI: Compared to existing blades in the market, Sun's new blades integrate seamlessly with existing management tools built around today's rackmount servers. No unique management tools are required to be integrated with Sun's blade servers.

By not differentiating the management of blade servers from rackmount servers, Sun Blade 6000 servers introduce no additional burden to existing datacenters that already have integrated management tools for their rackmount servers. No unique management of blade servers or their proprietary IO subsystems are required.

IC: How do these blades address power and cooling concerns?

IC: What are the advantages to using the Sun Blade 6000 servers for virtualization and consolidation?

IC: The Sun Blade 6000 line is very competitively priced. Is Sun doing anything else to make this new generation of blade servers more affordable?

ALASTI: Yes, with the Sun Refresh Service. With this innovative subscription program, Sun customers can have Sun replace blades with newer versions once they become available for 42 months, instead of paying for fixed configurations up front. That takes a lot of the ambiguity out of hardware depreciation and allows our customers to remain on the cutting edge of computing. Sun Refresh Service is currently available in U.S. only and will be rolled out to rest of the world later this year.