SPARC enterprise server

Features: In a worldwide launch, Sun Microsystems along with Fujitsu has launched a new class of enterprise SPARC servers.

The server family that includes a total of six entry-level (T1000 and T2000), mid range (M4000 and M5000) and high-end systems (M8000 and M9000), was co-developed by both companies.

Sun executives tout this line as the fastest SPARC/Solaris server yet from the company.

The line hopes to provide mainframe level reliability and features at open system prices.

“With this launch, we are geared to go after competition including the IBM P series, HP PA-RISC and HP-Itanium/ Linux,” said Baba Sam, marketing director, Sun Microsystems.

With enterprises looking for consolidation of infrastructure, better performance and ability to scale up, Sun feels that the servers hit the sweet spot in terms of price as well as performance.

“It is ideal for high performance computing environments that require floating point performance and high scalability; to power back office processes such as core banking, telecom and financial applications as well as web based services,” added Sam.

In fact, the company hopes to tap new verticals such as web infrastructure market, retail and insurance, and also its existing installed base. While the pricing details have not been finalized, Sam said that the price-performance rate would be 30 per cent more than the previous generation servers and would also offer about 50 per cent Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings.

The servers feature mainframe like specs such as predictive self-healing, higher service levels, dynamic configurations, online serviceability and a SPARC 64 processor with eight cores.

The new server line will be available with Solaris 10 operating system. Sam is confident that with the company would be able to get a bigger chunk of the server business in India with the new server portfolio. “We are confident of achieving our target of growing at twice the rate of the market in India,” said Sam.