Sun Fire X4600 Server

Yes. A rackmount kit is included with every Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Server but customers must add an additional part number for the rackmount kit. The part number is X8095A-Z. There is also an optional cable management arm (CMA), part number X8094A-Z.

A shelf must be used if our rail kit is not utilized. There are no mounting holes in the chassis. If you use a shelf you cannot space the servers adjacently, i.e. you will lose 1U per shelf per server.

The Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Servers will fit into the Sun Rack 900 (-38 and -36N), the Sun Rack 1000 (-38 and -42), and many non-Sun racks.

3rd-party racks which meet these criteria should support the Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Servers:

• rack horizontal opening and unit vertical pitch conforming to ANSI/EIA 310-D-1992 and/or IEC 60927
• four-post structure (i.e. mounting at both front and rear)
• distance between front and rear mounting planes between 610mm and 915mm (24 inches to 36 inches)
• clearance depth (to front cabinet door) in front of front rack mounting plane at least 25.4mm (1 inch)
• clearance depth (to rear cabinet door) behind front rack mounting plane at least 800mm (31.5inches), or 700mm (27.5inches) without cable management arm
• clearance width (between structural supports, cable troughs, etc.) between front and rear mounting planes at least 456mm (18 inches)

Four and Eight CPU configurations are supported. 2 and 6 CPU configurations will be supported in Q3CY2007.

No. In fact, the CPUs have to be the same revision with the same Opteron processor number.

No. Please also note that only the Sun Fire X4600 Server supports single-core CPUs. The Sun Fire X4600 M2 Server supports only AMD Opteron Series 8000 dual-core CPUs.

No. Rev F refers to the processor Stepping while the term Socket F is the physical socket. Rev F Opteron uses two sockets; Opteron 2000 and 8000 series use Socket F (1207) whereas Opteron 1000 series use AM2. Socket F are also planned to be used for future quad-core Opteron CPUs.

Yes, PowerNow! is implemented in both the Sun Fire X4600 processors and BIOS. PowerNow! lets the Operating System slow the processor's clock speed and consequently reduce power consumption by as much as 75% (Idle system) according to AMD.

PowerNow! is enabled by default in the latest X4600 BIOS. It is currently supported for use with Windows and certain versions of Linux; support in Solaris 10 is expected in update 3 around October 06.

For possible problems with PowerNow! enabled and Windows see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

No. The two server series use different DIMMs. The Sun Fire X4600 Server uses DDR1/400 registered DIMMs while the Sun Fire X4600 M2 Server takes advantage of the Opteron Rev F CPU's DDR2 memory controller and use DDR2/667 DIMMs.

In all cases, the systems have 4 memory DIMM slots per CPU socket and the DIMMs need to be installed in pairs for 128-bit memory access. All DIMMs must be of the same speed and density on a processor board however different processor boards may run with a different set of density/speed DIMMs as long as they are qualified for that system.

For the Sun Fire X4600 M2 servers, the 2 GB and 4GB DIMMs are dual ranked. If more than 4 dual ranked DIMMs are populated per CPU, DDR2 clocking drops from 667 MHz to 533MHz.

ChipKill allows a single DRAM chip to fail (not the DIMM just a DRAM chip on the DIMM, providing that the DIMM is of the type built from DRAM that have an I/O width of 4) and the system to continue running. It does have a slight performance penalty and can be disabled in the BIOS. The default is for chipkill turned on, though the OS can over-ride this setting.

The Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Servers support up to 2 low profile MD2 PCI-X cards and up to 6 low profile, half-length PCI-E cards which limits the length and height of the cards and their bracket. Four of the PCI-E cards are 8X (20 gigabit) and two are 4X (10 gigabit).

Form Factor Height Length PCI-X MD2 Form Factor (Low Profile) cards 51.5 mm (2.5 inches) maximum 169.3 mm (6.7 inches) maximum PCI-E Low profile cards 68.90 mm (2.731 inches) maximum 167.65 mm (6.600 inches) maximum PCI-E Standard height, half length card 111.15 mm (4.376 inches) maximum 167.65 mm (6.600 inches) maximum PCI-E Standard height, full length cards 111.15 mm (4.376 inches) maximum 312.00 mm (12.283 inches) maximum

The PCI slots for the Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 are number 0-7 moving from left to right across the rear of the chassis. Slots 0 and 1 are 100 MHz PCI-X slots. Slot 1 shares the bus with the LSA SAS 1064 hard drive controller, so placing a PCI-X cards slower than 100 MHz into this slot will adversely affect HDD performance. Slots 2, 3, 5 and 6 are 8-lane (8X) PCI-E slots while Slots 4 and 7 are 4-lane (4X) PCI-E slots. The PCI-E slots have dedicated buses so the population order isn't important.

No

There is an PCI-e SSL accelerator, P/N X6000A, for the Sun Fire X4100/X4100 M2/X4200/X4200 M2 and Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Servers.

There is no graphics support beyond the motherboard VGA Video, which is fixed at 1024 x 768 as that is the limit of the resolution that the service processor will forward through redirection. Sun offers a visualization solution using the X4600.

Only RAID 0 and 1 are supported. There is only a maximum of 4 internal disks in the server, RAID 1 is a good solution for redundant disk configuration with 4 disks.

No. Not at this time.

The embedded LSI SAS1064 has no cache. However it uses NVSRAM to store the write journaling info.

Yes. the SAS1064 drivers can be downloaded from LSI Logic. But they should be downloaded from Sun if available.

No, the LSI firmware can only be upgraded via the host, there is currently no way to upgrade via the ILOM Service Processor. That means that the server has to be rebooted to boot from the upgrade CD.

1. Hit <CTRL>+<C> to enter LSI setup when prompted
2. Select the primary on board controller (LSI1064)
3. Select RAID Properties
4. Select first drive (primary)
5. Select "D" to destroy existing drive data
6. Select second drive (secondary)
7. Select IM to create a RAID 1 mirror
8. Press ESC to return to last screen
9. Elect to save settings when prompted

Note: The RAID firmware needs 64 MB of unused disk space at the end of each drive to store the metadata.

Yes, 2 mirrored disks + 1 3rd disk setup as hot-spare is supported. Note: The RAID firmware needs 64 MB of unused disk space at the end of each drive to store the metadata.

IM (RAID1) and IS (RAID0) functionality are supported, and up to 2 volumes can be created per HBA. RAID0 volumes can be of up to 4 disks, and RAID1 volumes up to 2 disks.

The possible RAID combinations in a 4-HDD Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Server are:

• 4 drives non-RAID (JBOD)
• 2 drives RAID 0 + 2 drives non-RAID
• 2 drives RAID 0 + 2 drives RAID 1
• 2 drives RAID 0 + 2 drives RAID 0
• 3 drives RAID 0 + 1 drive non-RAID
• 4 drives RAID 0
• 2 drives RAID 1 + 2 drives non-RAID
• 2 drives RAID 1 + 2 drives RAID 1
• 2 drives RAID 1 + 1 Hot-Spare drive + 1 drive non-RAID

Impossible configurations are: 4 drives RAID 1+0 ( striped mirrors ), 3 drives RAID 1, 3- or 4-way mirrors.

No, the RAID controller works independently from the OS. After the BIOS screen, there will be a SCSI setup screen where you can configure the RAID controller to mirror disks before the OS kicks in.

The Sun Fire X4600/4600 M2 Servers use two Intel 82546GB dual-port Gigabit Ethernet.

Network ports on the back of the system are numbered 0, 1, 2, and 3, which may not map directly to how each operating systems numbers the ports.

The port mapping for the Sun Fire X4600/X4600 M2 Servers in various support OSs is:

Port Number Solaris 10 RHEL SuSE Windows 2003 Server Vmware 0 (BIOS slot 108) e1000g0 eth0 eth0 net eth0 1 (BIOS slot 109) e1000g1 eth1 eth1 net2 vmnic0 2 (BIOS slot 110) e1000g2 eth2 eth2 net3 vmnic1 3 (BIOS slot 111) e1000g3 eth3 eth3 net4 vmnic2

You can use up to 8 GbE NICs (using all PCI-E and PCI-X slots).

The Sun Fire X4600 (Rev E CPUs) was listed on the VMware HCL as of 22 Nov 2006. BIOS 41 (in SW1.1) or newer is required with VMware ESX 3.0.1.

The Sun Fire X4600 M2 (Rev F CPUs) was VMware certified with ESX 3.0.1 and is on the VMware HCL as of 14 Dec 2006. BIOS 36 or newer is required. This version of the BIOS allows the Sun Fire X4600 M2 to run VMware ESX 3.0.1 with all I/O slots usable. Only 2GB and 4GB DIMMs are supported, do not use 1GB DIMMs. All standard configs are shipped with 2GB DIMMs.

The Sun Fire X4600 (Rev E CPUs) was listed on the VMware HCL as of 22 Nov 2006. BIOS 41 (in SW1.1) or newer is required with VMware ESX 3.0.1.

N1SM 1.3 , but please use 1.3.1 which has additional some bugs fixes over 1.3.

Solaris 10: Use the native data-link capabilities of Solaris 10 to aggregate NIC ports from one or many different vendors. See the dladm(1M) command for more information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (64 bit): Under Red Hat and SUSE Linux NIC ports from one or many different vendors can be bonded together.
Use the following instructions:
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_79_899.shtm

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32bit and 64bit):
Use the following instructions:
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_85_6313.shtm

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, 10 (64bit):
Use the following instructions:
[http://support.novell.com/techcenter/sdb/en/2004/09/tami_sles9_bonding_setup.html]