Sun introduces Sun Fire x64 servers

Sun Microsystems revealed its new Sun Fire x64 servers today, with the twin ideas that less is more and more is more.

Sun’s new servers are half the size, half the cost and use one-third the power of comparable machines from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, said Clark Masters, president of Sun Federal.

The smaller and more power-efficient machines cost less to buy and operate, especially considering rising utility rates tied to record-level oil prices, Masters said.

Into that small footprint, Sun fit one-and-a-half times the computing power, Masters said. The Sun Fire X2100 has two CPUs, and the Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 have four CPUs each, which allow owners to run multiple programs simultaneously, he said.

The company hopes the numerous products it unveiled today in New York City will increase its share of the federal information technology market by convincing their competitors’ customers to switch to Sun products, Masters said.

That’s because Sun wants everyone to know that its products support more than just its Solaris 10 open-source operating system, Masters said.

Sun Fire x64 products support all industry standards for databases, operating systems and chipsets, Masters said. Sun sells Linux and Microsoft Windows on its machines and provides tech support for them as well as for Solaris, he added.

To sweeten the deal, Sun will now accept trade-ins of Dell, HP and IBM machines when customers buy new Sun Fire systems, Masters said.

Sun revealed seven new or enhanced storage products today and introduced Grid Rack Systems, pre-integrated product suites the company builds and ships ready to operate, Masters said. The systems are designed for specific industry tasks, such as high-performance computing or proxy cache serving.

The preconfigured systems contain a choice of Sun Fire x64 servers, Sun StorEdge Arrays, the Solaris 10 operating system and Solaris N1 System Manager software. The combinations give enterprise customers essential capabilities at reduced cost and can decrease deployment and installation time by up to 90 percent, Masters said.

Sun also announced its new Sun System Service Plans for Microsoft Windows Server. The plans provide integrated hardware and Microsoft Windows Server support for the new Sun Fire x64 servers. The plans also offer Sun Fire x64 users expanded operating system support and a single point of contact for managing mixed environments.