In the wake of a stalled IBM acquisition deal, Sun Microsystems on Tuesday unveiled new products and technologies in its Open Network Systems strategy. The products aim to maximize the economics of computing for data centers and clouds and include an advanced blades architecture, new networking technologies, and seven new systems based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series.
As John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun’s Systems Group, said today’s IT customer is looking for three things — speed, simplicity and savings. He said Sun’s Open Network Systems approach offers all three: “Our new x64 systems with integrated networking technologies, advanced thermal management, open software, and (Sun) Open Storage enhancements will give the data center an extreme makeover, boosting efficiency and maximizing IT investment.”
Speed, Simplicity, Savings
Sun said its approach uses “The Network is the Computer” as a guiding principle to integrate technologies such as Flash-based solid-state disks (SSDs) and Open Storage platforms for speed, integrated networking for simplicity, and advanced thermal management and the Solaris operating system for savings.
Sun is offering SSDs across all platforms and delivering systems with onboard Flash modules. These storage technologies help eliminate I/O bottlenecks and improve application performance. With SSD integration across software, systems and storage, Sun said customers can achieve up to 70 times faster response times, up to eight times better throughput, and up to 38 percent less power consumption than servers with traditional spinning hard disk drives.
Sun is also delivering low-latency, high-performance networking in its new Sun Fire x64 servers and Sun Blades. With Sun NEM technology for Sun Blade Modular Systems and servers, Sun said customers can reduce cost and complexity and simplify large-scale blade server deployments into existing network fabrics. Fire x64 products start at $1,488.
“We anticipate that the new high-performance capacity computing systems we are developing in…