Sun Netra 1280 Server

Rugged Reliability for Higher Availability

Telco quality goes the distance

The Netra 1280 server features Telcordia Network Equipment Building Standard (NEBS) Level 3 certification, which means it has been tested and shown to continuously operate under poor environmental conditions, providing extremely high levels of reliability. That's an understatement. The Netra 1280 was designed to withstand earthquakes, extreme hot and cold temperatures, humidity, and environments with dust, pollutants, and other air contaminants, all with enterprise-level reliability.

Availability by design

The heavy-weight Netra 1280 server is designed with a system of features targeted at obtaining maximum availability, including:

• Hot-swap disks and power supplies allow you to perform online maintenance and repairs as well as replace failed components while the system continues to run.
• Dual power supplies eliminate a single point of failure in a power supply or power source. You can swap out power sources with the system up, and reduce cabling hassles.
• Redundant connections to storage and network resources help maintain data consistent accessibility, even if a controller or cable failed. It can also deliver higher throughput and bandwidth to the disk array.
• Support for Sun Cluster software allows the Netra 1280 to be used in a SunPlex environment for enhanced system reliability (including failover capabilities). This helps you grow by leveraging your previous investments and extended resource sharing.

Scalability and Performance

They go together

The Netra 1280 server gives you a long path of upward scalability based on modular high-performance features, including:

• 4 to 12 1.2-GHz UltraSPARC III processors with 8 MB of external Level 2 cache each offer headroom for future services with virtually no trade-off between price and performance
• Up to 96 GB of memory in 1 GB DIMMS provides adequate capacity for storing data close to the processor unit, lowering response times and increasing throughput
• 9.6 GBps Sun Fireplane interconnect system bus further minimizes latency and maximizes throughput, regardless of whether the workload is compute-intensive, I/O-intensive, or a combination of both
• Balanced performance of processors, memory, network, and storage for better all-around performance of a wide range of application types

I/O options for performance

With two integrated Megabit Ethernet ports, a SCSI disk controller, and serial ports, the Netra 1280 server delivers high-speed network connectivity without using any of the six half-height 64-bit wide PCI slots. It's pure expandability for peripheral devices and functions, such as encryption. The extra slots eliminate contention among peripheral controllers and maximize processing capabilities, required for high-performance network environments.

Internal storage flexibility

The Netra 1280 server features an integrated SCSI disk subsystem with capacity for two 73 GB disks and one external SCSI port. [As a boot disk, it can be mirrored with software and extended via external disk arrays.?] The Ultra3 SCSI controller runs at burst speeds of up to 160 MBps.

Easy Serviceability and Maintenance

Every resource recruited

Want to significantly reduce the costs of maintaining a large number of systems? Fast, efficient, and convenient servicing options can help. For example, hot-swappable CPU/memory boards with Dynamic Reconfiguration let you perform system upgrades, expansion, and maintenance while the Netra 1280 server remains online. It streamlines maintenance and boosts system availability by allowing you to dynamically add new CPU/memory boards without rebooting the system, avoiding downtime. Sliders, cable arms, and front and back indicator lights combine with hot-swap components, LOM software, and System Configuration Card (SCC) to accelerate and simplify in-rack maintenance and servicing.

Ready-to-deploy delivery

The Netra 1280 is available through the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) Program, which integrates Sun and complementary third-party hardware and software products into ready-to-deploy system solutions. You can custom-configure its memory, hard drives, NICs, and storage. Software can be loaded and tested at the factory, and systems can by racked into place and shipped in a reinforced pallet. Netra 1280 servers will arrive at your site ready to deploy, significantly reducing early-life system issues, speeding implementation times, and improving return on investment.

Long Term Investment Protection

Built for the long haul

The Netra 1280 server offers a blend of the advantages of both Sun's Enterprise family of Datacenter servers and Sun's Netra family of Telco servers. The result is a substantial collection of investment protection features, including:

• A common firmware environment shared with the entire Enterprise midrange server product line ensures that the most advanced firmware features developed for the Enterprise line of servers is automatically delivered to the Netra 1280 server.
• Shared UltaSPARC III CPU/memory boards and other key components with the Sun Fire V1280 server helps minimize qualification and service costs if you're running both AC and DC powered environments.
• Near linear compute scalability up to 12 processors and 96GB memory -- three times the capacity of competitive servers -- gives you a long, smooth expansion path without the time, cost, and management overhead of constantly adding servers
• Shared Netra server technologies, such as Lights Out Management (LOM) software and a System Configuration Card (SCC), eases management and server application migration
• A 22" depth, designed to fit industry-standard 24-inch (600 mm) racks, optimizes space on the racks you already have. As the only server in its class to fit industry-standard racks, it preserves your rack investment
• Support for Solaris 8 Operating System and up, and its guaranteed binary compatibility, extends the range of applications you can run, protecting your present and future software investments

Platform protection

Sun systems adhere to a consistent, binary compatible system design, based on SPARC technology, Solaris OS, and an SMP architecture. This design consistency from generation to generation gives Sun systems a degree of compatibility not available from any other platform vendor, protecting your investment in applications and labor.