Awards & Reviews

Award Winning Products, Outstanding Performance

[Entry-Level Servers]  [Midframe and Midrange Servers]  [High-End Servers]  [Analyst Reports]  [View Past Awards]

The dramatic growth in market share, customer demand, and successful, satisfied customers is further amplified by the industry awards won by our products and the outstanding performance numbers.

Sun Entry-Level Servers:

• eWEEK - Sun Scales Up Blade System (2/9/04)
  Sun's Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform provides large organizations with a well-designed system for running multiple front-end applications within a single, compact system. Strong redundancy features and integrated management make the B1600 a good choice for Linux or Solaris shops. Sun Fire blades are priced competitively, starting at less than $1,800; the B1600 chassis starts at $4,795. However, adding load balancing and SSL offload options quickly raises the system's cost.
  
  
• ServerWatch - Sun Fire V210 Takes on Intel-based Servers (12/11/03)
  Sun has long had a reputation of being more expensive than Intel-based servers, but that reputation includes the understanding that you receive the extra stability and power of the 64-bit SPARC processor and the Solaris operating system in return for the extra expense. If that's your perception, it may need some fine-tuning with the release of the Sun Fire V210. With a starting price less than $3,000, the V210 is a SPARC/Solaris server that is competitive in both price and performance with Intel-based servers.
  
  
• eWEEK - Sun Fire Server Measures Up (7/21/03)
  Sun Microsystems Inc.'s decision to enter the x86 server space has faced skepticism from the industry, but eWEEK Labs' tests showed that the Sun Fire v65x is not only an effective, inexpensive server built with off-the-shelf Intel Corp. parts, but when coupled with Sun's upcoming Sun Control Station management software, it will also up the ante considerably in non-Windows environments.
  
  
• The Sun LX50 Server Awarded the 2002 LinuxWorld Enterprise Evolutions Award (08/14/02)
  Announced at LinuxWorld Expo, the Sun LX50 server is a 1U form-factor server that sports a pair of 1.4-GHz Pentium III CPUs and a raft of Sun software. Bundled with the Sun LX50 server are Sun Linux 5.0, Solaris 9 OE, the Sun ONE Application Server, MySQL Database, Sun Grid Engine software, Sun ONE Developer Studio, Sun ONE Active Server Pages (ASP), and Sun Streaming Server software.
  
  
• Sun Fire V480 server Harnesses UltraSPARC III Power (07/29/02)
  The Sun Fire V480, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s latest entry-level server, packs plenty of fire power in a compact 5U (8.75-inch) form factor. eWeek's Labs' tests showed the V480 will be a good choice as an application server, a database server, or even as a high-performance Web or file server in workgroups or as cluster servers.
  
  
• Sun Servers get an "A" in PC Magazine's 15th Annual Service & Reliability Reader Survey (07/11/02)
  Sun servers outscored both IBM and HP in PC Magazine's 15th Annual Service & Reliability Reader Survey. "Sun equipment is very reliable, and the service is great," crows one Sun user from New York. Says another, "My main server has been up for 159 days with no problems.
  
  
• Sun Fire 280R Outperforms the Competition in PC Magazine Review (05/21/02)
  In the May 21 issue of PC Magazine, general-purpose servers from Compaq, HP, IBM and others were compared to the Sun Fire 280R server. With a single 900 MHz UltraSPARC[R] III processor, the Sun Fire 280R server surpassed all other servers in the review on both the dynamic and static WebBench tests. Additionally, PC Magazine states that the Sun Fire 280R server includes the most impressive remote management they've seen. Read the article. View the Benchmark.
  
  
• The Sun Fire V880 Outperforms the Compaq Proliant 8500 Running Windows NT by More than 37 Percent. (10/29/01)
  Sun Fire V880 sets world record price performance benchmark on the NotesBench Lotus Domino WebMail benchmark. The Sun Fire V880 server, utilizing the UltraSPARC III processor, delivered a price-per-user cost of $18.47, beating Compaq's price-per-user of $24.88 by $6.41. The Sun Fire V880 server demonstrates 37% faster mail server performance using the NotesBench Lotus Domino WebMail application than the Compaq Proliant 8500 running Windows NT. The Sun Fire V880 server also delivers a price-to-performance ratio 26% better than that of the Compaq 8500, proving that Solaris Operating Environment (OE) implementations are more cost effective than Microsoft NT implementations.
  
  
• Eight-Way Sun Fire V880 with 16 GB of Memory is World's Largest System Ever to Run ECperfs; Delivers World-Record Performance. (10/29/01)
  Sun has demonstrated the world's largest system ever to run ECperf Benchmarks using an Eight-way Sun Fire V880 server with 16 GB of memory, running the Solaris 8 Operating Environment (OE). This test resulted in a world-record performance of 5961.77 BBops/min@Std and $51/BBops running Borland AppServer 4.5 with Oracle 8i and Java 1.3.1.
  
  
• The Sun Fire 280R server beats up HP and IBM for the InfoWorld Reader's Choice Award, (06/01/01)
  Demonstrating the new standard for enterprise computing, the Sun Fire 280R recently won the InfoWorld Reader's Choice Award for Server Hardware of the Year. With 37% of the votes, the Sun Fire 280R beat out IBM's pSeries S80 and Hewlett-Packard's Superdome. Providing massive scalability, real-time response, continuous server availability and agility, the Sun Fire 280R is a high-density, low profile server with up to two UltraSPARC III processors for service providers and enterprise data center environments.

• Sun Fire Midframe Servers Awarded CRN'S 2001 Channel Champion for the UNIX® Midrange Server Category, (03/13/02)
  Sun's newest UltraSPARC® III-based Midframe servers were recently voted number one in key technical areas such as product quality, reliability, scalability, price/performance and return on investment by systems integrators, network integrators and MSPs.

• Sun's 24-Way Midframe Server Sets New World Record for PeopleSoft 8 General Ledger with Combination Editing Benchmark Test, (08/13/01)
  A part of PeopleSoft's industry-leading Financial Management solution, PeopleSoft General Ledger (GL) gives customers extensive financial control, flexible system design, streamlined global processing and audience-relevant reporting. The 24-way configured Sun Fire 6800 Midframe server running the industry-leading Solaris 8 Operating Environment (OE) blew the competition away, achieving double the overall performance of its nearest comparably configured competitor, again proving the superior efficiency of the UltraSPARC III processor.

• Sun's Midframe Server Sets New World Record for PeopleSoft 8 Financials, (03/21/01)
  A new world record for the PeopleSoft 8 Financials Online benchmark, with Sun's new Sun Fire 6800 Midframe server delivering 2.4 times more system throughput than Sun's nearest competitor.

• Sun's New Sun Fire Server Hits Record Performance with Oracle E-Business Suite, (03/21/01)
  The combination of Sun's superior hardware and the Solaris 8 Operating Environment (OE) has delivered results in real world industry-leading benchmarks that demonstrate unprecedented levels of performance in scalability and flexibility, while clearly outperforming IBM and Compaq. This online transaction processing (OLTP) and batch transaction benchmark simulated users performing real-world multi-tier ERP application functions in the areas of financials and supply chain management.

Sun High-End Servers

• Sun Microsystems' Sun Fire 15K Server Sets Performance World Record
  Sun's performance is nearly double that of IBM's best results in SPECjbb2000 benchmark.

• Sun Outperforms IBM with World's Fastest Java Application Performance, (02/08/02)
  Tests on a Sun Fire 15K server, running the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) have established the F15K server as the fastest performing system on the market.

• Sun Fire 15K Server Chosen as Star of the Data Center by Customers Worldwide, (01/17/02)
  Customers across all industries are realizing the impact Sun's high-end Sun Fire 15K server has made on their IT infrastructures. Shipping in volume worldwide for months, the Sun Fire 15K server has already benefited the enterprise data centers of organizations such as Clearstream Services, Mid-Sweden University, Ocwen Technology Xchange, Tai Fook Securities Group, and Uppsala University.

• Sun Fire 15K System Running Oracle9i Delivers World's Fastest TPC Data Warehouse Result on TPC-H Benchmark, (01/17/02 )
  Preliminary tests on the Sun Fire 15K server, Sun StorEdge arrays, Sun ONE, and Oracle9i have established Sun as the fastest performing and best price/performance system on the market. The mainframe class Sun Fire 15K server has conquered a benchmark that IBM mainframes have failed to run so far.

• Sun Earns Top Year-End Accolades from CMP Media's Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Readers Choose Solaris, iPlanet and Sun's High-End and Midrange Servers Over IBM, (01/15/02)
  Sun also earned four top honors in the magazine's Readers' Choice awards beating out IBM for best IT products in Operating Systems with the Solaris Operating Environment (OE); the Portal Server Category with the iPlanet Portal Server software, the High-End Server category with the continually successful Sun Enterprise 10000 server, also known as Starfire; in the mid-range with the new Sun Fire Midframe server family.

• Sun Achieves World Record SAP-SD Performance, (09/25/01)
  Sun revealed world record performance with the two-tier SAP -Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) Application benchmark running on the newly announced Sun Fire 15K server in combination with Sun StorEdge T3 arrays, supporting 4,100 SAP-SD benchmark users with an average dialog response time of 1.88 seconds and 414,000 order line items per hour.

• New Sun Server Sets World's Record for Java Technology Performance, (09/25/01)
  World record results using the new Sun Fire 15K server on the SPECjbb2000 benchmark, achieving results of 324,542 operations per second, 2.5 times faster than IBM's best published results. To date, no other vendor has published results of this magnitude for a SPECjbb2000 benchmark. This benchmark also marks the first time a single Java virtual machine has been scaled to beyond 24 processors. The SPECjbb2000 benchmark tests the performance of a Java application tier portion of a multi-tier datacenter application.

What the Analysts are Saying

• Seattle Times - Sun Microsystems Sets New, Aggressive Strategy (November 18, 2003)
  Aberdeen analyst Peter Kastner comments, "Sun can use AMD's Opteron to compete directly against IBM in the head-to-head Opteron battle" for price-conscious buyers of high-performance computers.
  
  
• Bloomberg News - Sun Microsystems to Use Advanced Micro Computer Chips (November 18, 2003)
  Giga analyst Brad Day notes, " It makes a lot of sense. If this relationship (with AMD) takes, it will allow Sun to re-enter a segment of the market they left and Hewlett-Packard and IBM have taken over."
  
  
• InternetNews.com - Sun, AMD Join Forces on 64-Bit Computing (November 18, 2003)
  IDC Worldwide Server Group Research VP Jean Bozman comments, "Sun has (gotten into x86) in a pretty unique way by going to AMD. Because what they're going to do is have a chip there that's going to allow them to into each PC space very quickly."
  
  
• D.H Brown Associates: Sun Fire V440 Raises Bar for four-way Workgroup Servers with Leading Price/Performance (October 2003)
  Sun's recent announcement of the Sun Fire V440 resets customers' price/performance expectations of a four-way capable 64-bit UNIX server.
  
  
• IT Centrix: The V440 Server Challenges the Intel Heartland (2003)
  The more traditional server vendors such as Sun are now driving down 64-bit computing into very low cost entry servers in the heart of Intel country.
  
  
• Illuminata Inc. Review: This research note is a review of the Sun Fire 3800-6800 Midframe servers and was published shortly after the introduction of 900MHz processors on the Sun Fire family (Nov 2001). It overviews the Sun Fire Midframe server capabilities, highlighting Sun's particular strengths vis-a-vis the competition.
  
  
• Illuminata Inc. Review: This research note is an analysis of the Sun Fire 15K server. It also contains a good overview of the Sun Fire Midframe and High-end server product line, and highlights the advantages/differences of each product in the family, with special emphasis on the Sun Fire 15K.
  
  
• IDC Review: Sun's "Midframe" Launches Ramp-Up in UltraSPARC III-Based Servers, April 2001 [View PDF]
  IDC discusses how Sun Microsystems' new midrange servers will affect the dynamics of the overall midrange server market and what the UltraSPARC III-based Sun Fire servers means to Sun's business.
  
  
• IDC Bulletin: Sun's StarCat: A High-End Server Designed to Pounce into High-End Data Centers [View PDF]
  In this report, IDC dissects Sun Microsystems' new Sun Fire 15K server and discusses how the redesigned high-end server, based on "UltraSPARC III chips, Solaris 8, and enough redundant components for near-continuous operation", affects and impacts the overall high-end server market.