Sun servers boost networking
SUN has announced a new line of high-end servers that improve on previous models by as much as 70 per cent.
They are also being offered in clustered configurations to target the high-end markets traditionally captured by mainframes.
Along with the Netra Internet servers which the company launched earlier to target the PC-LAN market, Sun is now offering solutions that span the range of networking requirements from low-end to high-end, according to Michael Remedios, the firm's marketing manager in Hong Kong.
The new SPARCcentre 2000E and SPARCserver 1000E feature 60-MHz processor modules. The 1000E is an enhanced version of the SPARCserver 1000 and is available in configurations from two to eight processors.
The more powerful 2000E is a follow-up to the SPARCcentre 2000.
At the same time, Sun is annoucing the availability of the SPARCcluster1000 PDB and the SPARCcluster2000 PDB servers.
These systems provide no single point of failure in hardware and are highly fault tolerant by expanding parallel computing to multiple machines rather than having multiple central processing units in one workstation.
The clusters feature redundant data paths between all nodes to all disks and to all external networks.
A cluster includes at least two systems, two or more SPARCstorage Array disk subsystems, a cluster management console, and cluster-support software.
According to Mr Remedios, Sun expects clusters to provide ideal upgrade options to mainframe users with a fully-configured cluster costing less than half the price of a mainframe upgrade.
The systems should appeal to organisations that need on-line transaction processing and real-time decision support.
The first parallel database product available for the PDB cluster servers is the Oracle Parallel Server.
SPARCserver 1000E starts at US$76,020 and the SPARCcentre 2000E's base configuration is priced at US$174,713.
The clusters start at US$541,835 for a 1000 PDB server and US$970,445 for a 2000 PDB server.
