From Unigram X, a sister publication

On the back of impressive third quarter numbers Sun Microsystems Inc has gone on the offensive, unveiling its first 64-bit commercial symmetric multiprocessing servers as the Ultra Enterprise line and targeting them clearly at the looming crop of commodity iAPX-86 symmetric multiprocessing servers, plus traditional RISC adversaries Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp. The Ultra Enterprise Sunfire servers accommodate from six to 30 167MHz UltraSparc I RISC processors across four cabinets; CPU modules, input-output boards, disk storage and power supplies can be hot-swapped and are interchangeable between models. Sun will miss out the 200MHz UltraSparc used in high-end Ultra 2 workstations and their server variants altogether and offer models using the 250MHz UltraSparc II parts in the autumn followed by the 300MHz, which it says it already has working in systems. Sun will not support mixed processor environments – its boot-up mechanism will run a system at the speed of the slowest CPU – and instead will promote aggressive trade-up programs. Although there is no technical reason why the 167MHz processor cannot support more than 512Kb cache, that is all Sun offers as of now. It says the 250MHz will come with 512Kb, 1Mb or 2Mb caches.

By William Fellows

A new Gigaplane system bus interconnect is claimed to provide up to 2.5Gb per second sustained input- output throughput on RAM- laden systems compared with Digital Equipment Corp’s 1.7Gbps AlphaServer 8400 system bus and Hewlett-Packard’s 960Mbps T520 bus. It provides three times the throughput of the XDbus Sun uses in its existing 1000 and 2000 series servers. Gigaplane sits between the CPU and memory boards and Sbus input-output boards which support Asynchronous Transfer Mode, Fast Ethernet and Fiber Channel but no PCI until 1997. Sun has already licensed Gigaplane to Sparcsystems partner Fujitsu Ltd for systems it will build for the Japanese market. Sun says it is unlikely to license the system bus to any of the other Sparcsystems houses which sell systems in the US, claiming they would not be able to support it effectively. It is still considering whether to allow Europeans, such as Fujitsu’s ICL Plc, to have the thing. Although Sparcsystem builders have access to UltraSparc, the 1.6Gbps UltraSparc Port Architecture for two-way symmetric multiprocessing and a range of ASICs, it was their inability to license XDbus that prevented them from cloning Sun’s existing 1000 and 2000 server lines.

Shy of Spec95

The mainframe class Ultra Enterprise 6000 can accommodate up to 30 UltraSparcs, 30Gb memory, up to 16 CPU or input output board slots, up to 45 Sbus slots and 10Tb disk in a rack mountable form. An entry- level uniprocessor costs $213,100 with 64Mb memory, 12Gb disk, one input-output board and CD-ROM. Sun estimates it will perform 17,000 tpm. It is still shy of Spec95 numbers on its servers, claiming Spec92 still provides a better measure of symmetric multiprocessing. It says it will do Spec95 soon. The rack- mount Ultra Enterprise 5000 data center is designed for large scale transaction processing and can house 14 processors, eight board slots, up to 21 Sbus slots, 14Gb memory and 6Tb disk. It starts at $95,100 with one CPU, 64Mb memory, 12Gb disk, one input-output board and CD-ROM. It does 11,465.93 tpm-C ($189 per tpm-C) running Sybase SQL Server 11. The deskside departmental Ultra Enterprise 4000 can house 14 CPUs, 14Gb memory, 4Tb disk, eight board slots and 21 Sbus slots. Pitched as a database engine, it costs from $72,800 with one 64Mb CPU, 4Gb disk, one input-output board and CD-ROM. The Ultra Enterprise 3000 departmental tower for business and technical applications supports up to six processors, 6Gb memory, 2Tb disk, four board slots and nine Sbus slots. An entry level uniprocessor with 64Mb, 2Gb disk, one input-output board and CD- ROM costs from $39,100. It is estimated to do 6,900 transactions per minute. Each input-output board has two 200Mb per second channels, 100M-bit per se

cond Fast Ethernet, Fast/Wide SCSI, Fibre Channel and three Sbus expansion slots. All models ship this quarter.

Workgroup

Sun is also offering monitorless versions of the symmetric multiprocessing Ultra 2 workstations with up to two 167MHz or 200MHz CPUs – and 512Kb or 1Mb cache per CPU – 2Gb memory and 1Tb disk as Ultra Enterprise 2 for database management, Web service and Internet commerce. With one 167MHz CPU, 64Mb memory, 2Gb disk and CD-ROM, it costs from $21,000. The one- and two-way systems use only one CPU board and do not include the Gigaplane interconnect bus. UPA throughput is 1.6Gbps, input- output is 133Mb per second. It ships in May and is rated at 3,107 tpm-C ($141.74 per tpm-C) running IBM Corp DB2 2.0. The new tower form factor server recently introduced as the 167MHz Netra i 150 is also being made available as the Ultra Enterprise 150 workgroup system. Stripped of its Internet baggage, it comes with 512Kb cache, 32Mb memory, 2Gb disk, 100Base- T, CD-ROM, floppy and Fast/Wide SCSI and 12 disk bays priced from $16,500. It will ship in the third quarter and is estimated to perform 1,332 tpm. The 143MHz Ultra 1 Model 140 workstation is also available as an Ultra Enterprise 1 server from $12,000 with 64Mb memory, 2Gb disk and CD-ROM. It is also estimated to perform 1,332 tpm.

Storage

Sun’s offering Unisys Corp’s Open Storage Module rack-mount disk subsystem as the SparcStorage Array Model 214RSM for use with the Sunfires. The Fibre Channel interface-based array implements the SCA2 (single connector attachment, second generation) Sun co- developed with Seagate Technology Inc, which also supplies the drives. It can accommodate 75Gb to 176Gb storage per array; the data center servers support between 75Gb and 10Tb disk – $77,800 buys 75Gb; the 176Gb model will cost $118,200.

SyMon management

For use with the Sunfires there are new releases of Solstice Backup, AutoClient, AdminSuite, Site Manager and Domain Manager systems and network management, plus a SyMon graphical systems monitor co- developed with Network General Corp’s AIM Technology division which is interoperable with AIM’s SharpShooter systems management offering. SyMon will go up on the Ultra 2 and 150 servers, and on the 1000 and 2000 series from November.

Solaris 2.5.1.

The new servers will run a new release of Solaris: version 2.5.1 includes support for 64-bit asynchronous kernel input-output and 4Gb memory. SunSoft was keeping mum on the new version last week, as it wants to make a splash about the next stage of its 64-bit Solaris road- map next month with 2.5.1.