I was reading this thread last night for the first time in a very long while, and read the debate about what might save Sun. Could this be it?
blogs.wsj.com
July 9, 2008, 12:26 pm
Sun Trumps its own Thumper
One of the perennial questions in computing is the best way to divide calculating functions from the parts of a system that store data. Sun Microsystems is pushing is pushing an unusual answer.
The Thumper
In the beginning, companies typically bought data storage systems from the manufacturer who sold them their computers. Then suppliers like EMC and NetApp built big businesses by selling storage systems that could work with many brands of computers. Big companies often buy racks and racks of simple servers that each may have a disk drive or two in them, but the computers typically send queries to the separate storage systems for jobs that require big pools of data.
Sun, which has lagged competitors in the storage-systems market, tried a different tack. In 2006 it introduced what it calls Thumper–a compact box, about 7 inches tall, that contains 48 disk drives as well as twoCK servers. By keeping the computing and storage elements together, it takes much less time to pull data from the drives, says Graham Lovell, Sun’s director of open storage. Meanwhile, because Sun uses inexpensive standard components, Thumper systems cost customers about one-half of the cost of traditional storage, he says.
Sun Wednesday introduced a second-generation model of Thumper–formally called the Sun Fire X4540 Server–that has twice the computing power and is twice as fast as Sun’s original model, but consumes the same amount of power. It will be available this month at a starting price of $22,000, slightly lower than the previous model.
Richard Villars, an IDC analyst, expects the idea to catch on. He estimates these kinds of storage arrays represented only 5% of revenue in the storage market last year, but by 2011 IDC estimates that number will increase to 20% of the spend. “This is the new storage market,” he says. |
