Small and Medium Business

Virtualization can benefit your growing business by increasing agility, lowering power and cooling costs, and reducing complexity. With Sun's ultra-scalable x64 servers running VMware, or our powerful CoolThreads servers with built-in Logical Domains virtualization technology, you can achieve the highest degree of server virtualization—enabling you to significantly consolidate servers and save money.

Back to Top

Sun Innovations at Work

• Can replace eight older IBM X346 servers
• Requires eight fewer system administrators per deployed rack
• Can save more than $1 million in energy and virtualization costs over three years
• Using a combination of the on-chip 2 x 10 GbE interfaces and Sun 10 GbE NIC, you can reduce the number of network connections/ports by 3x and improve performance by more than 2.5x in order to consolidate your network infrastructure
• Logical Domains, Sun's powerful server virtualization and partitioning technology, provide another important feature with OS isolation, offering the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a CoolThreads server—up to 64 isolated OS instances, with granularity at the CPU thread level. It can also save $5,000 per server per year compared to proprietary offerings.

Back to Top

Back to Top

System Sizing Guide

Entry Level Choices Application Form Factor Sizing Needs Products

VMware ESX Server (virtualizes Windows Server, Linux, Solaris 10)	Rack	1-15 servers/applications	Sun Fire X4200 From $2,465 Buy »
		16-30 servers/applications	Sun Fire X4450 From $23,995 Buy »
		31-50 servers/applications	Sun Fire X4600 M2 From $7,495 Buy »
	Blade	1-15 servers/applications	Sun Blade X6220 From $3,995 Buy »
		16-25 servers/applications	Sun Blade X6250 From $3,295 Buy »
Logical Domains to support multiple virtual machines running Solaris 10	Rack	1-15 servers/applications	Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 From $14,995 Buy »
	Blade	1-15 servers/applications	Sun Blade T6320 Buy »
External Storage Options	Direct Attach	SAS RAID: 365 GB to 36 TB	Sun StorageTek 2530 Array From $6,430 Buy »
	IP Attach	ISCSI RAID: 365 GB to 27 GB	Sun StorageTek 2510 Array From $7,465 Buy »

Back to Top

---

Reference Materials Here's the drill-down on Sun's virtualization solution: Top News Stories InfoWorld Names the Sun Fire X4600 M2 the Best High-Performance Server CRN Reviews Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server Data Sheets Logical Domains VMware with Sun VMware blog on why the Sun Fire X4600 M2 server is best to virtualize Oracle Sun Fire X4200 Server Sun Fire X4450 Server Sun Fire X4600 M2 Server Sun Blade X6220 Server Sun Blade X6250 Server Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server Sun Blade T6320 Server Sun StorageTek 2510Array Sun StorageTek 2530 Array

Here are just three of the systems designed for small and medium businesses. Featured Product Gallery Sun featured products: Sun Blade X6220 Server Module, Sun Fire X4450 Server, and Sun Fire T2000 Server White Papers Virtualization with Logical Domains and Sun CoolThreads Servers Beginners' Guide To LDoms Sun Fire X4600 M2's Proven Virtualization Scalability Success Stories See how other small and medium businesses are moving ahead with Sun innovations. See Success Stories

Back to Top

---

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1.

Q:

What's the best server virtualization path for my business?

A:

Here's a good guideline for selecting your solution:

What do you want to virtualize?

• If you have a Solaris/SPARC environment or web server environment, consider Sun's Logical Domains technology with low-power, high-performance, CMT-based UltraSPARC servers
• If you have Windows and Linux applications, choose VMware Virtual Infrastructure or Microsoft virtualization technology running on Sun x64/x86 servers

How many servers would you want to virtualize or consolidate?

• Sun offers servers that can virtualize 10 to 50 operating environments into a single server. If you have more than 50, just use two or more Sun servers. The servers have redundant and hot-swappable power, cooling, and other technologies to ensure you have the highest reliability while you have many applications running in a single server.

2.

Q:

Which servers are best for me—Rack or Blade?

A:

Here is a basic guide:
- Choose Blade servers if you require:

• Simplified maintenance, with quick and easy addition of new servers
• High density deployment, with at least 4 servers and expansion to 10 or more servers in the future
• Simplified cable management of multiple servers

- Choose Rack servers if you require:

• Servers of different compute capacity (1-processor, 2-processor, 4-processor, 8-processor)
• Only a few servers (less than 4) in one location
• More than 2 I/O slots in a server, especially when PCI-E or PCI-X cards are needed
• Servers with more than 128GB of memory

Back to Top