Server Categories
| Sun classifies its hardware offerings based on the number of clients a server can service. That roughly translates with other server vendors into the number of processors in the server. However, in a world where a 1U server is meant to be densely stacked into a large rack, or where a blade can be stacked 16 or 20 blades to a cabinet ("server shelf"), Sun takes a longer view of the situation. Thus Sun uses the following classifications for the servers it sells:
With these categories in mind, let's now take a look at the specific models currently offered at the time of this writing. Entry-Level ServersAn entry-level server is generally one that is a general-purpose server. Compared to other vendors, Sun's entry-level servers offer the widest range of options in terms of the operating systems supported. Sun's entry-level servers come with both Opteron and UltraSPARC processors (the III and IIIi series); the Opteron processors can run not only on Solaris but on Linux, Windows, and VMware as well. For many people, Sun's entry-level servers offer an economical platform that they use to scale their applications horizontally. All of Sun's entry-level servers carry the Sun Fire series labels, with the lone exception of Sun's iForce VPN Firewall Appliance. Another common characteristic of all the entry-level servers is that they are all rack-mountable, low-profile servers, in 1U to 4U sizes. Sun makes these entry-level servers with the Internet marketplace in mind. These rack-mounted servers are meant for applications that scale horizontally, such as server farms used for websites. Sun's entry-level servers run the gamut from several single-processor systems to a couple dual-processor systemsall the way up to the 4U eight-processor-capable Sun Fire V880 server. (It's hard to call an eight-processor server entry level, but Sun does.) Table 19.2 compares some of the central features of the current models of the Sun Fire series of entry-level servers. You can find a more complete list at www.sun.com/servers/family-comp.html.
In 2004 Sun had a line of server appliances that was derived from the product line of its acquisition of Qube. Along with its Cobalt appliance line and caching appliances, only one of these systems survived the company's financial difficulties. Of these systems, only the Sun Control Station has a proposed next-generation product listed, and by all appearances, Sun's appliance line has retrenched into a software-based strategy, best exemplified by the iForce VPN, which can run on a variety of systems. Note The latest entry-level servers from Sun are the Galaxy series. The Sun Fire X2100 features one Opteron processor; the X4100 and X4200 feature one or two Opteron processors. All Galaxy series servers support both single-core and dual-core Opteron processors. For details, see www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp. Sun's entry-level systems form the basis for an enterprise computing solution based on the grid model of computing, which is useful in areas as diverse as statistics, graphical analysis, structural analysis, and molecular and computational chemistry. The Sun Grid Rack System is populated with Sun Fire V20z or V40z servers, which are Opteron systems. Grid computing offers the ability to spread a computational load over multiple systems while still maintaining the flexibility to work on smaller problems on a single computer in the grid. Rather than thinking of a grid system such as Sun's Grid Rack System as a cluster or distributed system, it's best to think of grid computing as a way of performing massively parallel processing projects. To enable grid computing, systems ship with management tools as well as software that acts to manage the processing load among the systems that are part of the grid. It is anticipated that grid computing may become part of pervasive computing technologies, where computer processing is available wherever a person goes. You can read more about Sun's grid solution at www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?cat=Compute%20Grid&tab=3. Midrange ServersIn Sun's view, a midrange server is meant to be a powerful system that offers high performance at a reasonable price. What differentiates a midrange system from an entry-level system is that a midrange server offers improved fault tolerance and high availability. Midrange servers also ship with support for more management tools. Table 19.3 lists the current members of the Sun midrange server line.
High-End ServersSun's high-end servers are positioned as mainframe replacements. These servers can support from 36 to 72 UltraSPARC processors and are sold into the marketplace as highly fault-tolerant, mission-critical data center servers. Sun's high-end servers are meant to run without downtime, and they come with a number of features that allow them to be reconfigured while they are operational. Sun's high-end servers come with hot-swappable components and bus structures. Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), which shipped with Solaris 8, lets you reconfigure a core component while Solaris and the applications that run on the system continue to function. With DR you can replace memory boards, PCI cards, CPUs, and other components dynamically, which means basically on-the-fly. DR works in concert with a feature called Dynamic System Domains, which lets you run instances of the Solaris operating system and applications on the same server. Table 19.4 list the four current members of Sun's high-end server line.
Sun also resells the Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER line of enterprise-class SPARC64-V computers. There are currently seven systems in this new product line: PRIMEPOWER 250, 450, 650, 850, 900, 1500, and 2500. For details on this product line, which is sold only in certain geographical areas so that it doesn't compete with Fujitsu, go to www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?cat=PRIMEPOWER%20Servers&tab=3. Blade ServersSun's blade server strategy was an important part of Sun's scalable server architecture marketing until June 2005, when Sun discontinued its line of blade servers, including the Sun Fire B1600 chassis system, Sun Fire B100s, Sun Fire B100x Sun Fire B200, Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Bridge, Sun Fire B10p SSL Proxy Blade, and Sun N1 Blades Starter Pack. Sun plans to reintroduce new blade server models in early 2006. Although the exact configuration of the new blade servers has not yet been fully revealed, it appears that Sun will reintroduce two new classes of blades:
The expected price of blade servers will average around $1,000, while the cabinet or chassiswhat Sun refers to as a "shelf"will probably run between $6,000 and $7,000. It is believed that a number of the new blade servers will be dual-processor capable and that they will include more built-in networking and management features, such as switches and perhaps InfiniBand interconnect. With a new management console, it should be possible to turn blades on and off at will, to fail over from blade to blade, to monitor a blade's current condition, and to have each blade's identification be autorecognized. Sun officials have stated that each of these next blade servers will come with a built-in management chip and switch. Blade servers are important to Sun and other hardware vendors because they allow for a system to be horizontally scaled as needed; this architecture is very important in some of Sun's key markets: high availability clusters, Internet, telecommunications, and others. A number of enterprise applications that run on Sun servers are being redesigned to run on blade servers. This includes IBM DB2 and Oracle, among many others. A blade configuration essentially packages a computer motherboard so that it is a plug-and-play hot-swappable component in a blade chassis. That chassis shares the power supply and air cooling functions among the installed blades. With blade servers, a data center can create some very dense processing racks with as many as 200 servers in the size of a home refrigerator, thus delivering the power of mainframes. The current problem with blade servers is that the systems have not yet been completely standardized. There's a rush among server vendors to sell blades, but the market is still relatively young. Therefore, the complete feature set of a blade varies from OEM to OEM. Storage ServersSun is one of the most important players in the storage marketplace, from a hardware perspective, but particularly from a server platform perspective. Sun sells a range of storage devices from small devices up to enterprise-class intelligent storage arrays, as well as accompanying software. However, Sun's real importance in the storage industry is as a strategic server platform. In a data center, only two management server platforms matter: Microsoft Windows servers and Sun Solaris servers. Almost every significant enterprise storage application or storage server that claims to be multiplatform or heterogeneous supports these two server platforms. Much of the most important storage server software has started out on Sun Solaris first before moving to other operating systems. Note You can find Sun's storage home page at www.sun.com/storage/. Sun has grown its storage offerings by building them and converting its servers into storage platforms. It has also acquired a number of companies in the storage market, including HighGround for its storage resource management software, Cobalt for its appliances, and in the summer of 2005, one of the storage industry's pioneering enterprise hardware vendors, StorageTek. Table 19.5 provides a short list of Sun's storage hardware offerings.
Sun's StorEdge storage servers are popular with Sun's server customers but aren't as popular with organizations that have large investments in EMC, Hewlett-Packard, or other vendors' storage solutions; they are also not very popular with organizations that are trying to maintain open systems storage solutions. As shown in Table 19.5, Sun offers a wide variety of systems under the StorEdge brand, including a number of systems that are built by other vendors and relabeled by Sun. This is a very common practice in the storage industry. A number of data management applications are bundled with Sun storage servers. Sun's software portfolio includes the following areas of technology:
Sun ClustersSun Cluster is an integrated hardware/software platform that can cluster up to 16 nodes of Sun servers, running either on the SPARC or x86 platform. Sun Cluster 3.1, which is the latest version of the software, runs on top of the Solaris operating system and is sold as a complete solution with a set of interconnect technologies, storage, and Sun services to keep the whole thing running. Cluster 3.1 uses the Solaris IP Multipathing (iPMP) software, which allows servers to be multihomed and support multiple network interfaces, to improve I/O and overall performance. Sun Cluster 3 supports the dynamic reconfiguration of cluster hardware, including the addition or removal of CPUs, memory, I/O boards, and other devices. Thus you can pull processor boards out of a Sun server and replace them with faster units without having to bring down either the server or the cluster. Sun calls its on-the-fly reconfiguration DR; the DR software intervenes when it detects a problem with the addition or removal of devices. Sun clusters can add servers in up to 16 nodes, which means it's possible to build mainframe-class applications by using Sun Cluster 3.1. Some very large databases have been built on this platform, running Oracle9i RAC (Real Application Cluster). Sun's cluster management application software is called SunPlex Manager, and it manages a cluster as if it were a single system. In the Sun Management Center, Solaris's graphical management utility software, a Sun Cluster module can detect the condition of elements of Sun Cluster through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, using a set of SNMP agents. There are also third-party SNMP agents and utilities that you can use to monitor and manage Sun Cluster. Sun's servers are packaged along with a set of applications as a platform called the Sun Java Enterprise System, which comes with the following:
The Java Enterprise System can be used on nonclustered versions of Sun servers, but it you build these applications on a cluster, you can scale them higher and give them greater fault tolerance. In that regard, Sun Cluster 3.1 is the basis for a long-distance connectivity solution that Sun sells, called the Sun Enterprise Continuity Solution. This solution allows nodes in Sun Cluster to be located as far away as 200km. So when a cluster node in a data center goes offline, the cluster can fail over to a remote node. In addition, Sun has a web service called the Sun Cluster Global Network Service that allows you to build an application on top of a Sun cluster, distribute that application, and then use this free service to load balance your application and make it available. The use of the Sun Cluster Global Network Service means that even if your cluster nodes are geographically separate, you don't need to worry about establishing a load-balancing service and making it fault tolerant because Sun's service is available over the Web. Other consolidated services include Global Network Service, Global Devices, and Global File Services; all the "globals" simply translates into a unified management view of these assets within the cluster management software. You can also use the UFS or the VERITAS VxFS as your cluster file system in place of Global File Service. Sun Custer 3 technology has some unique features. The Sun cluster can inventory memory, and with remote shared memory (RSM), it can let an application use fast-interconnect technology to directly access memory directly in the cluster, even if the cluster nodes are disbursed. RSM uses the Scalable Coherent Interconnect (SCI-PCI) technology to bypass transport over Ethernet. RSM is useful in building high-performance database applications. Another feature, called Application Traffic Striping, allows IP traffic to be striped across multiple interconnects. NEBS-Certified ServersThe Telcordia (formerly Belcore) Network EquipmentBuilding System (NEBS) is a telecommunications standard that defines what equipment can be used in a telecommunications network as part of an ILEC or Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) central office. The standard has been around since the 1970s and is used as a design goal by server vendors wishing to sell into this very large marketplace. Verizon, Qwest, SBC, and AT&T all ascribe to this standard, which is driven by Telcordia's software, used in both wired and wireless networks. Certification involves submission of a sample of a company's server product to a certification agency. Sun makes a line of servers that network equipment providers use for their central office installations. That line of equipment runs the gamut from 1U blade servers through the 12U Netra 1280 server. Among the recommended uses are application servers, control points, gateways, location registers, network management platforms, streaming media servers, switching, voice and VoIP, and webservers and caching. For a table that lists the current generation of Sun NEBS-compliant servers and their intended uses, go to www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?cat=Netra%20Carrier%20Grade%20Systems&tab=3. |
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