By Leslie O'Neill

The new network economy is turning IT into a strategic business arm of nearly every company, but the huge growth in throughput loads has created an unending demand for servers that can scale upwards to meet that demand and still operate efficiently to hold costs to a reasonable level and limit their environmental impact.

Today Sun is announcing two new servers that take the proven open-source third generation Chip Multithreading Technology (CMT) to the next level by offering unsurpassed throughput for web scale and enterprise application infrastructures, in an economical and ecologically efficient way—the new servers deliver three times the performance in half the space, four times the performance per watt, and cost about one third as much as competitive systems.

"During the last two and a half years the performance of Sun CMT systems has skyrocketed," says John Fowler, executive vice president of the Sun systems group, "and increased more than 5 times from generation to generation, maintaining the same footprint while improving on jaw-dropping power efficiency and price performance. Sun continues to multiply both CoolThreads sockets and threads and today offers performance gains the competition just can't match."

The Sun UltraSPARC T2 Plus Processor

Powered by the new multi-socket capable UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor new Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers are specifically designed to handle the massive throughput demands of Web 2.0 services, enterprise and HPC applications. The combination of CoolThreads technology, the Open Source Solaris 10 operating system, MySQL, Glassfish, developer tools and services, enable users to break new ground and to rapidly deploy high-availability Web 2.0 and enterprise services.

"Sun is blending the performance and scalability of traditional mid-range servers with the proven economies and efficiencies of open-source chip-multithreading technology," says Fowler, "these ground-breaking new servers allow you to scale instantly using less resources, which means you can get new network services to market far more quickly and at significantly reduced cost."

Jason Bond Pratt, CIO of IT.com, which performs specialized searches for information technology solutions says, "Anyone can scale "search" as such...but we are doing much more than ordinary search and what we found is that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server provided an unbelievable capability we never thought possible from any cluster of general purpose servers and at a price point trivial to what that cluster would cost to build and maintain."

UltraSPARC Teams Up With Solaris

When teamed with the multi-threaded open source Solaris operating system, each UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor can run 64 simultaneous processes, with up to two processors installed into a single space and power efficient system, and appear to Solaris as 128 separate computers. Current software investments are protected because Solaris 8 and 9 applications run unchanged on Solaris 10 on these servers.

"Compared to x86 systems, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server provides up to 5 times the performance in less than half the space with pricing at up to one-third less," says Fowler. These new systems can also have two to four times the memory and local disk capacity, so they can grow as you do, without requiring you to rip and replace. The on-chip encryption and on-board 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology also enables the systems to create outstanding efficiencies for data center virtualization and consolidation with the highest levels of security. :

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240

• Two UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors
• 64GB memory in a 1U form factor or 128GB in a 2U form factor

"The compact form factors and world record throughput of these new Sun servers give administrators a path to compressed data centers, without trade-offs," says Nancy Riley, Senior Product Manager, T5140 and T5240 servers. For example, the T5240 delivers over two times the performance with three times the performance per watt in half the space than comparable x86 systems. She adds that Sun's virtualization software adds to the performance potential of these new servers. Open source LDoms virtualization software is shipped with the new servers at no cost, and can create up to 128 isolated operating system instances, enabling them to consolidate IT jobs on fewer systems. Also available for download are Cool Tools for use in development, tuning, debugging, applications, and deployment utilities that can optimize applications running on CoolThreads servers.

Sun also delivers complete services packages, including specialized installation, virtualization/consolidation services, Solaris 10 upgrade assistance, and Sun Spectrum support which provides coverage for the hardware and operating system. Customers may also purchase a Solaris 10 subscription, which entitles them to the latest Solaris Updates, Solaris Named Releases, Software Updates, and other Sun support.

Save Big

If bought by June 30, 2008, Sun is offering up to 45 percent off the purchase price of the new systems, creating some very compelling values compared with similar systems from Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Here are some details on the savings:

• You can get 45% off a T5240, reducing the starting price to $8,500, if you try a T5240 in Sun's Try and Buy program, and purchase before June 30, 2008.


• A T5240 with 32GB of memory and OS support will initially cost $17,922 with the introductory Try and Buy discount. A similarly loaded HP DL580G5 costs $46,006.


• Or, trade in your old IBM or HP server before September 30th and qualify for an allowance of up to 30% against the price of a T5140 / T5240.

Get Started Today and Save

Sun's new T5140 and T5240 servers are ideal for any organization seeking to reduce space consumption and power consumption, and become more ecologically responsible, while meeting the needs for the new network economy.

Administrators can sign up to try the new systems free for 60 days. Contact a Sun representative for more information on how these new systems can compress a sprawling data center and help protect the planet.