Sun MicroSystems has always touted its vision of “The Network is the Computer” across more than 100 countries and on the Web. That was never more evident than recently, when Sun made a boatload of announcements, all of which concern the most advanced computing platforms on today’s market.

 

Mark Butler, Product Line Director for Netra Systems at Sun Microsystems (News - Alert), says, “Recently, we made some announcements in four different areas. The first thing that we’re doing concerns our Netra rack server side. We’re launching our first ‘Niagara 2’ rack server in the Netra line, which holds an UltraSPARC T2 processor and our chip multithreading program. To be a bit more technically specific, Sun introduced what appears to be a first for the industry: a carrier-grade, 64-thread rackmount server [which means it can support 64 virtual servers in one box], powered by Solaris — the Sun Netra T5220 server — which is also the industry’s first Network Equipment Building Standard (NEBS) Level 3 Certified Rack Server based on the UltraSPARC T2 processor, the industry’s first ‘system on a chip.’ It is powered by the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), a secure carrier-grade OS that has found favor in the telecom industry.”

 

“We had launched the ATCA blade version in the fall of 2007, and now, we’ve just launched and have started shipping our rack server implementation of the T2 processor,” says Butler. “This is uniquely suited for the communications infrastructure market, with chip multithreading and onboard 10 Gigabit Ethernet support. There’s also cryptographic acceleration and features that support high-speed computing and networking.”

 

As the first carrier-grade, 64-thread rackmount server in the market, the Sun Netra T5220 server should be terrific for virtualization and consolidation scenarios, since it offers 64 virtual systems in a 2U high, 20-inch-deep form factor. Other features include: Integrated no-cost virtualization technologies with a choice of Solaris Containers and Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) Integrated on-chip cryptographic acceleration and 10 Gigabit Ethernet computing Expandability and I/O performance from six PCI slots and four Ethernet interfaces Enhanced system uptime with high on-chip RAS, redundant power supplies, hot-pluggable disk drives, and support for hardware RAID. The Sun Netra T5220 server powered by UltraSPARC T2 processors is available now with entry-level pricing starting at $14,995.

 

“So we now have this technology in the Netra line, both in an ATCA blade form factor as well as a 2U rack server,” says Butler. “We also have a couple of new partners: AppGate Network Security and Zeus Technology have both signed on to develop applications for the Sun Netra T5220 server.”

 

“The second thing we’ve done has been to preview our first set of Intel (News - Alert) x86 Netra products,” says Butler. “We’ve shown two rack servers, the 2U and 4U products, as well as an ATCA blade. Both the 2U rack server and the ATCA blade have two-socket, quad-core Xeon processors. The 4U system has a four-socket implementation, giving you a 16-core machine, which will be unique in the carrier-grade market, at least in terms of scaling up that high with x86 processors. In the past, we’ve always scaled carrier-grade machines even higher than that on the SPARC line, but I believe this will be the first on the market for an x86 rack server that’s carrier grade to scale that high.”

 

It looks like Sun has, indeed, delivered on its commitment to roll out an entire line of carrier-grade telco servers based on Intel Xeon architecture.

 

“Third, we’re announcing some additional partners in our software ecosystem for what we call the Sun Unified Network Platform [SUN-P],” says Butler. “SUN-P is an OEM solution set that enables a sweeping consolidation of the network, significantly lowering the cost of wireless deployments, such as WiMAX or Long Term Evolution [LTE (News - Alert)]. SUN-P thus brings all of the above-mentioned technologies together — such as our chip multithreading and logical domains virtualization, together with some special software, to handle data plane applications — either on Netra rack servers or Netra bladed systems.”

 

“We provide this as a set of products to developers and service providers to deploy in their networks to achieve some pretty radical consolidation benefits by putting all of these technologies together, from Sun and our partners. And we’re announcing three new partners in that ecosystem: Bridgewater Systems (News - Alert), Dialogic, and OpenClovis.”

 

“Fourth, and finally, talking a bit about the business momentum on the Netra product line in general on both the rack and blade side,” says Butler, “we’ve grown quite dramatically the past two years. In particular, on the ATCA blade side, we’ve grown quite rapidly. We do have a very robust offering of products in the Netra line, both in terms of rack servers and blades.”

 

Sun Microsystems has always been in the forefront of server development and it has also been a partner-centric kind of company. Both strategies appear to have served it well.