Another doomed attempt in McSquealy's land to defy WINTEL :-)
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Source: Computergram International
Date: October 29, 2001
Number: 4282
By Timothy Prickett Morgan
Sun Microsystems Inc will today unveil its long-awaited eight-way UltraSparc-III workgroup servers, code-named "Daktari" and an integral part of the Serengeti family of products. In addition to the Daktaris, Sun will also launch the first machine in its Netra line of thin servers, which are popular as infrastructure platforms for telecoms, dot-coms and service providers, that make use of the "Cheetah" UltraSparc-III processors that Sun has been rolling out into its product line for a little more than a year.
The delivery of the Daktari server, which will be sold as the Sun Fire V880, allows Sun a certain amount of closure, being the second to last of the major UltraSparc-III server announcements that has been expected from Sun. Both the four-way "Cherrystone" and eight-way "Daktari" servers are based on two-way motherboards similar to those used in the "Littleneck" Sun Fire 280R servers that were announced in September 2000 (CI No 4,008).
None of these machines has support for the domain partitioning that is available across the Sun Fire 3800, 4800, 6800 and "StarCat" 15000 machines announced over the past year or in the "StarCat" Enterprise 10000 servers that date from 1996. Back in June of this year, the rumor was that the Cherrystone and Daktari servers might make their debut in July or August, with the StarCats following in September (CI No 4,192).
At the end of July, when Sun announced its financial results for fiscal 2001, Ed Zander, Sun's chief operating officer, said that Sun would roll out the Cherrystone and Daktari servers over the next couple of months, but was not specific about launch dates. Exactly when the Cherrystones will be available is unclear. Sun doesn't want to talk about future products or code-names, but the important thing is that Daktari is here and, at least as far as Sun's calculations are concerned, offers better price/performance than the roughly equivalent Intel-based Pentium III Xeon servers that have two, four or eight processors.
The Daktari server has from one to four dual processor UltraSparc-III motherboards, with the chips running at 750MHz. Sun says that the machine is upgradeable to future UltraSparc-III processors, but did not say which ones or when they might be available. Each UltraSparc-III processor is equipped with 8Mb of L2 cache memory. Sun boasts that this is anywhere from four to 16 times the L2 cache memory offered on Intel's 700MHz Pentium III Xeon processors, the heavy hitters in the 32-bit Intel server chip product line. Sun further claims that the Daktari machine offers six times the system bandwidth of the "Profusion" eight-way servers co-designed by Intel Corp and Compaq Computer Corp.
The Daktari server has nine hot-plug PCI slots, three media bays and can support up to a dozen hot-plug FC-AL disk drives with multipathing to disks. The Daktari server also has a built-in Fibre Channel controller as well as integrated 10/100 BaseT Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Sun is pushing its existing "Purple" T3 disk arrays alongside the Daktaris for those customers who need additional storage.
"A lot of people think that Sun does not compete down in the entry space against Intel-based servers," said Souhil Saliba, senior director of Sun's Volume Systems Product Group. "We have a significant presence, and the Sun Fire V880 will increase that presence." i am one of those :-) [Pareti, Joseph]
The Volume Systems Product Group was created by Sun five months ago and includes the Sun Ray thin client, Netra infrastructure servers, Sun's entire workstation product line and the entry servers including the new Daktari and future Cherrystone machines (which are expected to be branded as the Sun Fire 480R servers when they ship) as well as the existing Sun Fire 280R machines and prior generations of machines with four or fewer processors.
Saliba said that according to market research performed by International Data Corp, Sun had a 21% market share across all entry server platforms in the second quarter
of 2001, compared to 20% shares for Dell Computer Corp and IBM Corp and a 24% share from Compaq.
Sun is obviously keen on selling down into this part of the Intel server market, and has priced the Daktari machines very aggressively. By its own reckoning, Sun says that in general the Daktari will offer
anywhere from 31% to 46% lower costs than an Intel-based server from Compaq or IBM with the same number of 700MHz Pentium III Xeon processors, main memory and disks.
Sun said that a Daktari machine with two processors, 4Gb of main memory, and six 36Gb disk capacity sells for $29,995; a Compaq ML750 with two Pentium III Xeon processors, 4Gb of memory and six 36Gb of disk sells for $45,000, and a similarly configured IBM xSeries 370 sells for $48,300. These prices include the cost of Microsoft's Advanced Server with the Internet Connector software on the Wintel side and Sun's Solaris 8 operating system on the Sun side (Solaris 2.6 and 2.7 are not supported on the Daktaris).
Sun said that a four-way Daktari with 8Gb of main memory and six 36Gb disks sells for $49,995, while a ProLiant ML750 with four Pentium III Xeons, 8Gb of memory and the same amount of disk sells for $66,000. IBM is charging $61,600 for an xSeries 370 with the same configuration as the ProLiant in its comparison. On eight-way machines with big gobs of main memory, Sun says that the ProLiant can't even go to the same 32Gb that the Daktari can. That eight-way Daktari with 32Gb of memory and a dozen 36Gb disks sells for $119,995, which compares pretty favorably to IBM's xSeries 370 with eight Pentium III Xeons running at 700MHz and with 32Gb of memory and the same dozen 36Gb disks, which sells for $184,000. These comparisons are based on processor count, not on actual benchmarked performance, so take them as you will.
The new Netra 20 is the follow-on to the popular Netra 1120 and 1125 thin servers, which were announced in 1999. The Netra 20 can have up to two 750MHz UltraSparc-III processors and a maximum of 8Gb of main memory. It is essentially a skinnied down and NEBS 3 compliant version of the Littleneck server. The Netra 20 comes in a 4U form factor and ships with a single PC-AL 36Gb disk and 512Mb of main memory for $11,495.
Saliba said that a number of its existing telecoms and service provider customers, who have run out of gas on the Netra 1120 and 1125 line because they use the old 440MHz UltraSparc-II processors, have already upgraded to the new machines, and expects its installed base to adopt these improved infrastructure servers as soon as their budgets allow, and added that Sun has seen interest in these ruggedized thin servers from various government agencies, particular the branches of the military. In one instance, one branch of the US military has installed the Netra 20s in HUM-V vehicles, using the servers as part of intelligence gathering. Both the Daktari Sun Fire V880 and Netra 20 servers are available immediately on a worldwide basis. timpm@computerwire.com |
