Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 Server

The Next Evolution of Servers is Here

Sun open systems for mission-critical applications

Compared to any other offering, the Sun SPARC Enterprise servers give you the widest range of scalability and deployment choices with processing power to spare:

• Sun SPARC Enterprise M3000/M4000/M5000/M8000/M9000 servers - The ultimate virtualization and consolidation systems offering mission-critical reliability and unmatched investment protection.
• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220/T5140/T5240/T5440 servers with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology - Single, dual-socket, and quad-socket 1-4 RU servers with the fastest throughput for a wide range of network, application, HPC and OLTP database environments, with dramatic space and power efficiency.

Enterprise-Quality Software

Solaris application compatibility guaranteed

The Sun SPARC Enterprise servers run the Solaris 10 Operating System, which provides full compatibility with existing applications running on earlier versions of Solaris OS. It's part of the Solaris Application Guarantee.

SPARC/Solaris multiplies your virtualization power

Using large systems for virtualization projects is critically important to data center customers. Solaris 10 OS users have it easy, once again, especially with these systems. First, the Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server gives you up to 2 dynamic domains with assignment flexibility. Then, Solaris 10 OS lets you apply up to thousands of Solaris Containers per system to completely isolate and protect the applications, data, and performance within each container. That's probably more flexibility than you need. But by comparison, large HP and IBM systems require one OS instance for each container. That's probably a lot less flexibility than you need. It's an easy choice.

A complete enterprise software system pre-installed

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server comes with the full Sun Solaris Enterprise System, which includes licenses to run some of the most popular software components of the Sun Java Enterprise System software. This powerful and complete suite gives you a wide range of choices to consolidate your IT infrastructure on integrated, open, standards-based systems. After all, that's what Sun does best, and it's where the enterprise is headed. The Sun Solaris Enterprise System can get you there faster.

Enterprise-Strength Hardware

Meet the dual-core SPARC64 VI and quad-core SPARC64 VII processors

The new SPARC64 VII processor consists of four SPARC V9 cores with two simultaneous threads per core. It's built with an advanced 65nm Cu 10-layer process technology for high speed and density. You can choose to configure the Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server with up to 4 processors with 16 cores running 32 threads and each processor can have access to any memory DIMM regardless of its location. And what's more the SPARC64 VII processor is 100% binary compatible with the SPARC64 VI processor — so there is no need to recompile.

Vertical Multithreading (VMT) maximizes resources

The dual-core SPARC64 VI processors is designed with vertical multithreading (VMT) technology. This is a coarse-grained multithreaded technology that enables the multithreaded control instructions to suspend idle threads so that the active threads can use any unused resources. As an example, when the number of threads is equal to the number of cores, the system performance is equivalent to a CPU without VMT; however, when the number of threads is greater than the number of cores, VMT increases the CPU throughput by as much as 20 percent. L2 cache misses are hidden very effectively using VMT technology.

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) improves throughput

The SPARC64 VII processors are designed with simultaneous multithreading (SMT) technology. This is a multithreaded technology that enables the multithreaded control instructions to run in parallel across both threads in a core. There is no thread context switch time and the two threads in the core share the instruction pipeline smoothly. SMT increases the CPU throughput from 40 to 80 percent. L2 cache misses are hidden very effectively using SMT technology.

Built for data center reliability, availability, and serviceability

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 – M9000 servers are specifically designed for the RAS demands of top data centers in the largest installations.

• End-to-end ECC protection
• ECC and Extended ECC protection for memory, memory mirroring, and predictive self healing
• Guaranteed data path protection
• Most latches (ALU and registers) are parity protected
• Automatic recovery with instruction retry
• Cache dynamic degradation is built in
• The number of data checkers has increased from approximately 800 to 2200

The new backplane interface boosts performance

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server employs a new system interconnect which is a 32GB/s crossbar switch that interconnects processors and local memory with the I/O subsystem. This interconnect/bus was designed to minimize latency and provide maximum throughput, regardless of whether the workload is compute, I/O, or memory intensive.

Extended System Control Facility (XSCF) improves system availability

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server is managed with the Extended System Control Facility (XSCF), a service processor that continuously monitors the system hardware configuration and health, domain configuration and status, error monitor, and notification. A noteworthy improvement over previous generation servers is the new capability of being able to isolate problems down to the chip level. XSCF configures the system to not use the broken part of the chip, and while the system remains available, you can schedule maintenance at a regular interval without incurring costly system down time.

Hot-swap I/O

The I/O system interface features hot-swappable I/O cards and disk drives, each of which provides eight PCIe slots and two 2.5-inch SAS disk drive bays. Fully configured, these servers support up to 1 internal PCI-X slot and four internal PCIe slots. With the optional external I/O expansion unit, you can increase the number of supported I/O slots to a maximum of 25 PCIe or PCI-X slots.

Total domain flexibility

The Sun SPARC Enterprise servers give you significant new levels of domain support. For example, the Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server can support up to 2 dynamic domains. For increased flexibility, we extended the domain partitioning granularity down to one processor chip, four DIMMs, and two I/O slots. The combination of dynamic domains, coupled with the thousands of Solaris Containers per system that the Solaris 10 OS provides, makes this server the ultimate consolidation/virtualization machine.

Get More for Less...

Extended & Upgraded Warranty Coverage

Customers can extend and upgrade their product warranty coverage with our SunSpectrum Support Services. Through these support offerings, Sun delivers proven expertise and consistent responsive quality service to help you achieve high availability within your IT infrastructure. Learn more about how you can extend and upgrade your warranty coverage with SunSpectrum Support Services.