Solaris Express Developer Edition 9/07 for VMware

The latest version of SXDE (Solaris Express Developer's Edition), which is based on OpenSolaris Build 70, is available for download from Sun. There are three options for obtaining the s/w:

• Download a DVD image
• comes as three parts that are each just over 1Gb
  
• Download a virtual machine for VMware
• comes as three parts that total 2.2 Gb - expands to 6Gb
• You will need VMware Workstation 5.5 or above, VMware Player, or for a Mac, VMware Fusion.
• Request a free DVD
• fill in a form and Sun will send the DVD to you
  

Sun xVM Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 1.0

The Sun xVM Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 1.0 is now available for download. The product page and 4-page data sheet provide more details. Note that the s/w download and updated product page are using the "brand" of xVM, while the slightly older data sheet and the September 11th press release used the same name without xVM.

Sun xVM is composed of Sun Ray s/w and a limited use case of Sun Secure Global Desktop (SGD) Software (one full screen desktop per concurrent user is allowed). From a Sun Ray thin client or a PC, users can access a Windows, UNIX or Linux desktop environment which run in a VM in the datacenter. Having a single s/w license that includes both Sun Ray and SGD is new with xVM VDI 1.0.

At a recent VMware event, Sun showcased VDI connector technology. That technology, now in beta, will be integrated into a future release of xVM VDI. This 1 hour Sun/VMware webcast discusses how the Sun xVM VDI Software is used to display desktop environments running in virtual machines'

Features

• Communications between client desktops and the servers are secure
• Protocols designed for WAN use deliver high performance
• Support of Windows, UNIX and Linux desktops provides flexibility
• Subset of full Secure Global Desktop allows Sun to offer a competitive price
  

SGD clients can also be used to access AS/400 and OS/390 systems via the TN3270E or TM5250E protocols.

Most Popular Articles from "System News For Sun Users" Vol 116 Issue 3

Each week, we determine which articles have been most frequently referenced by logged-in subscribers to provide you with a list of the most popular articles for each of the last 4 issues.

Top Ten Articles for Vol 116 Issue 4

• UltraSPARC T2 Servers Set Floating-Point Single-Chip Record on SPEComp Benchmark [18784]
• Sun UltraSPARC T2 Servers Deliver Highest Single Socket JVM Performance [18783]
• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Posts Industry-Leading Results on Lotus Domino R6iNotes [18822]
• Making Storage Think for Itself (or at least for the User) [18700]
• Free Download of Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 [18824]
• Download Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager (CAM) 6.0 Free [18830]
• Sun Expresses Continued Support of Cluster File Systems Lustre [18800]
• Andy Bechtolsheim Talks About Innovating in a Commodity Market [18787]
• Sun Acquires J.D. Power and Associates Certification [18838]
• John Fowler on the Prospects for Sun's Merged Server, Storage Units [18797]

Top Article for Vol 116 Issue 2

• Sun xVM Infrastructure Previewed: Sun xVM Server and Sun xVM Ops Center [18756]

Top Article for Vol 116 Issue 1

• Run Windows and Windows Apps on Solaris OS with Win4Solaris [18691]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 4

• Performance Tests Compare Sun Fire V480 and T2000 Servers [18672]

Sun To File Suit Against NetApp

Last month NetApp files suit against Sun claiming that ZFS infringed NetApp patents. Jonathan Swartz responded in his blog entry, "Thank You, Network Appliance", saying

• Sun did not approach NetApps about licensing any of Sun's patents and never filed complaints against NetApps
• Sun is focused on innovation and winning customers, not litigation
• Sun will use its patent portfolio to protect communities, and indemnify customers
• and "Thanks" to NetApp for pointing out that ZFS on servers such as the SunFire x4500 are viable alternatives to NetApp

Nice response. They story continues in Jonathan's latest blog, "ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk?" He says that NetApps wants to "unfree" ZFS and limit ZFS to servers only and not storage devices. To that JS says, "computers are storage devices, and vice versa". He make three key points:

1. Sun indemnifies all its customers against IP claims like NetApp's
2. Sun protects the communities using our technologies under free software licenses
3. Sun files patents defensively

He finished with a point that makes it worth reading his blog again:

So later this week, we're going to use our defensive portfolio to respond to Network Appliance, filing a comprehensive reciprocal suit. As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license - on which Network Appliance was started. By opting to litigate vs. innovate, they are disrupting their customers and employees across the world.

Sun now has a page on it's website devoted to this lawsuit:

The purpose of this website is to inform the open source community about the patent lawsuit launched by NetApp, and to invite open source developers to help in responding to these claims. NetApp has claimed that ZFS infringes 7 of NetApp's WAFL and storage patents. In one example, NetApp claims broadly to have invented the concept of "copy on write." Examples of such claims found in the NetApp patents are highlighted

In an interesting twist, Sun is leveraging the Open Community and the power of the network to seek examples that predate the NetApp patents:

If you are aware of software, code, publications or papers, patents - either US or Non-US, other media or websites that relate to the technology described in NetApp patents, that predate the filing of the NetApp patent, then you can help by sending that information - also known as "prior art"- to us following the instructions

The New Quad-Core x64 Sun Workstation, the Sun Ultra 24

Sun announced the Sun Ultra 24 Workstation, a single socket (dual or quad core) Intel workstation - the first Intel based Sun workstation since the Sun 386i (1988). Dual core configurations start at $995, quad core at about $2,400. Sun is targeting the high-end, technical professional with this family of workstations. High-end configurations have been priced very competitively against similar configurations from Dell and HP.

Technical Specifications

• Up to 8Gb DDR2-667 memory with DIMM sizes of 512 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB (2 banks of 2 DIMMs each)
  
• Several CPU choices
  

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processors
• Intel Core 2 Quad Processors
• Intel Core 2 Extreme processor

• Supports NVIDIA graphics accelerator cards:

• 1 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600
  
• 1 NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600
  
• 2 NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700
• 2 NVIDIA Quadro FX 570
  
• 2 NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290
  

• Certified for many O/S environments:
  

• Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4)
• Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit/64-bit)
• Windows XP Professional (32/64) Service Pack 2 and later
• Windows Server 2003 R2 and SP2 (32-bit/64-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS Client 5.0 (32-bit & 64-bit) and later
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4.5 (32-bit & 64-bit) and later
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (64-bit) Service Pack 1 and later
• Ubuntu 7.10

• Compatible upgrade path to next-generation Intel workstation processors
• Single Gigabit Ethernet integrated on motherboard
• Up to four SATA drives, 3TB maximum: 250GB, 750GB (7,200 rpm)
• Up to four SAS drives (Through PCIe HBA), 1.2TB maximum: 146GB, 300GB (15,000 rpm)
• 2 FireWire ports (front)
  
• 7 USB 2.0 ports - Two (Front), Four (Back), One (Internal)
• Audio- High Definition Audio 1.0
• PCI Express slots

• Two full-length x16 Gen2 slots
• One full-length x8 slot (x4 electrical)
• One full-length x1 slot

Sun reports that the Ultra 24 Workstation will be available through the Try and Buy program beginning Nov. 12.

There is a 6-minute video of Brian Healy, Sun product manager, presenting the Sun Ultra 24 on youtube:

The Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Documentation, available now, includes these books:

• Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Safety and Compliance Guide
• Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Operating System Installation Guide
• Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Product Notes
• Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Service Manual
• Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Installation Guide
• Where to Find Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Documentation

Sun Ultra 24 Workstation Datasheet

Solaris 8 Migration Assistant 1.0 (Project Etude)

Dan Price announced that Solaris 8 Migration Assistant 1.0 (also known as Project Etude) is now available from Sun.

• Download and install the product (a free 90 day evaluation license is provided)
• The download site also includes a 560Mb Solaris 8 flash archive that can be used for testing
• A patch is also required. (127111)


• Browse the documentation online

BrandZ provides the framework to create non-global zones that contain non-native operating environments. Branded zones are used in the Solaris Operating System to run applications that cannot be run in a native environment. The brand described here is the solaris8 brand, Solaris 8 Branded Zones

• Read the FAQ

1. What is the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant?
2. What are the software components of the offering?
3. What are the service components of the offering?
4. Why is Solaris 10 support required?
5. How does the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant work?
6. What does this conversion tool do?
7. How does the Solaris 8 Container work?
8. Can you run multiple Solaris 8 Containers on the same system?
9. What are the benefits of using the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant?When should I use Solaris 8 Migration Assistant?
10. Will all of my Solaris 8 applications run with the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant?
11. Does this extend the support life of Solaris 8?
12. Sun guarantees that application binaries that run on previous releases of Solaris will continue to work on newer releases. If that's the case, why is Sun making the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant available?
13. What about patching?
14. Do all the Solaris 8 Containers need to be at the same patch levels?
15. Which Solaris 8 versions will be supported?
16. What software do I need on the source and target systems to do the installation?
    
17. Can I use Solaris 10 features such as ZFS, DTrace and Predictive Self Healing with the Solaris 8 Container?
18. Can a customer easily and safely implement this software?
19. How does the licensing work inside other virtualization technologies like Dynamic Domains?
20. How do I purchase Solaris 8 Migration Assistant Subscription?

• Learn more from Dan's previous blog entries about Etude (here, and here)

Dan's summary:

In a nutshell, the product provides a migration solution from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 by creating a bridge between the two operating systems. You can perform P2V (physical-to-virtual) conversions of existing Solaris 8 systems, and drop those into Solaris 8 containers running on your Solaris 10 host.

Note that an annual license is required for this product. A valid Solaris 8 license is also required as is a Sun PS Enterprise Migration Implementation Service.

Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1

With the release on LDoms 1.0.1, I expect that many more Sun customers will experiment with this technology and feel confident enough with it to put it into productions.

Honglin Su writes:

Logical Domains (http://www.sun.com/ldoms) is Sun's server virtualization and partitioning technology, and a key element of Sun xVM Infrastructure on Sun servers with CoolThreads technology. LDoms software leverages the hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, I/O, and storage) by creating partitions called logical or virtual domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Specialized control domain allow the management of these resources using the Logical Domains Manager.

He identifies 5 key new features/benefits

1. With LDoms 1.0.1, any domains, whether it's a guest domain or a primary domain, are independent virtual machines and they can be configured, started or stopped independently without requiring a power-cycle of machine.
2. UltraSPARC T2 platforms support (32 domains support at initial release, 64 domains support following)
3. The Logical Domains MIB (management information base) is delivered as an extension module to the System Management Agent of Solaris 10 running in the control domain. The LDoms MIB helps enable third party system management applications to perform remote monitoring and starting and stopping logical domains using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
4. Domain minimization support - Minimal/reduced Solaris installation for higher security and ease of maintenance
5. LDoms Browser User Interface (web console, unsupported freeware)

Let's take a look at the release notes and see what's required:

Sun UltraSPARC T1-based servers such at the T1000 and T2000 servers

• system firmware: 6.5.x plus patches
• Solaris for primary domain: Solaris 10 11/06 OS plus patches
• Solaris for guest domain: Solaris 10 11/06 OS plus patches

Sun UltraSPARC T2-based servers, such as the T5120 and T5220 servers

• system firmware: 7.0.x plus patches
• Solaris for primary domain: Solaris 10 8/07 OS
• Solaris for guest domain: Solaris 10 11/06 OS plus patches

The complete list of supported systems:

• Sun Fire or SPARC Enterprise T1000 and T2000 Servers
  
• Netra T2000 Server
• Netra CP3060 Blade
• Sun Blade T6300 Server Module
• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers
  

Sun recommends 512 Mb for Solaris 10 11/06 OS and 128 Mb is minimum size. The default size for a swap area is 512 megabyte. Note that you should expect to use at least 12 Mb per domain because:

The OpenBoot™ PROM has a minimum size restriction for a domain. Currently, that restriction is 12 megabyte. If you have a domain less than that size, the Logical Domains Manager will automatically boost the size of the domain to 12 megabytes.

The release notes have the specific patch numbers for the Solaris and Firmware patches.

Software That Can Be Used With the Logical Domains Manager:

• SunVTS™ 6.3 and 6.4
• Sun™ Management Center 3.6 Version 6 Add-On Software
• Sun Management Center 3.6 Version 7 Add-on Software
  adds support for the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers and contains bug fixes
• Sun™ Explorer 5.7 Data Collector can be used with the Logical Domains
  Manager 1.0.1
• Solaris™ Cluster software can be used only on an I/O domain, because it works only with the physical hardware, not the virtualized hardware.
  

The system controller software interacts with the Logical Domains 1.0.1 software:

• Sun Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) 2.0 (UltraSPARC T2-based servers)
• Advanced Lights Out Manager (ALOM) Chip Multithreading (CMT) Version 1.3 (on UltraSPARC T1-based servers)

Currently, you cannot use an DVD to install a guest domain. A guest domain can access the DVD to install applications.

There are many pages in the release notes that detail specific issues and, if available, the appropriate workaround.

Eric Sharakan warns there are two important caveats when upgrading from LDoms 1.0 to LDoms 1.0.1:

• Configurations saved to the service processor under 1.0 are not usable under 1.0.1. The LDoms 1.0.1 Administration Guide describes the upgrade procedure that needs to be applied to work around this. Part of this procedure needs to be carried out BEFORE performing the actual upgrade!
• You must upgrade both the firmware and LDom Manager components at the same time

Documentation

• LDoms Site


• LDoms 1.0.1 Release Notes (58 page)


• LDoms 1.0.1 MIB Admin Guide (60 pages)


• LDoms 1.0.1 MAN Page (40 pages)


• LDoms datasheet (2 pages)


• July 2007 (rev 2.1) Beginners Guide to LDoms: Understanding and Deploying Logical Domains for Logical Domains 1.0 Release (106 pages)


• April 2007 White Paper: "VIRTUALIZATION WITH LOGICAL DOMAINS AND SUN COOLTHREADS™ SERVERS" (23 pages)
  

Sun's Open Source Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Project Darkstar, Sun's version of the online game server platform written entirely in Java technology, made its debut at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Sun also announced the opening of registration for the Darkstar Playground, which will enable developers to create a wide variety of games that can be provisioned through a single server platform.

A new interview Sun Labs' Jeff Kesselman, whose official title is "chief instigator" for Project Darkstar, has just been posted on the Sun Developer Network.
Jeff says that Darkstar is, "a Sun Labs project to develop a piece of infrastructure software for latency-critical, massively scaled online applications, which translates, among other things, to massively multiplayer online games."

When asked why is Sun interested in massively multiplayer online games, Jeff says

The online game space has huge potential for Sun. Games such as World of Warcraft, Lineage, RuneScape, Final Fantasy, EverQuest, and others serve millions of subscribers and run on thousands of network servers.

Sun sees this as a potential growth market for our servers and for services. The industry estimates that it currently costs about $30 million to create the basics for massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest. By releasing software that reduces development costs, we hope to enable more developers to participate in the rapidly expanding online game market and to create growth opportunities for Sun hardware and service businesses there.

Developers can sign up at the Project Darkstar community site and they can learn more about the architecture.

Mind Control Software is using Project Darkstar. In a presentation given at the Austin Game Conference, they list the reasons why:

Project Darkstar

• Modern approach
• Well contemplated
• Appropriately abstracted
• Keep focus and flexibility
• Thriving user community

Technology

• World class expertise
• Scalable, Fault Tolerant, Reliable Server Systems
• Open your eyes to cross-platform
• Massive Scalability
• Plug-in architecture

Sun Microsystems

• The backing of Sun Microsystems
• Hosting
• Generous license agreement
• Commercial license

10GbE on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 servers have two ways to provide 10 GbE ports.
One way is to plug in a dual--port PCI-e Network Interface Unit (NIC) X1027A-z (right).
Another way is to use the on-chip dual 10GbE Network Interface Unit (NIU). You connect to the on-chip by using a PCI slot to hold the XAUI (X (roman 10) Attachement Unit Interface), which is a standard for connecting 10GbE devices.
There are important tuning parameter for both the NUI and PCI-e 10 GbE options. For example, the tunable parameter for the number of kernel threads that offload processing of received packets from interrupt CPU should be set in /etc/system:

set ip:ip_soft_rings_cnt=16

What is the difference in performance? Here's what "pure see" says:

NIU wins in all micro-benchmarks except one - single 10GbE port transmitting UDP small packets.

Sun Multi-threaded 10GbE PCI-e NIC can transmit an impressive 2.1 million 64 byte UDP packets per second, 50% more than NIU (1.4 million pps) out of one port, due to the fact that it has 50% more transmit DMA channels than NIU (12 vs. 8 per port).

So if your workload is mostly sending small UDP packets, Sun Multi-threaded 10GbE PCI-e NIC may deliver higher packet rate than NIU on UltraSPARC T2 systems.

In all other scenarios, NIU gives higher throughput or lower CPU utilization at similar throughput. On 2 10GbE port throughput test, 2 NIU can achieve an impressive 14.6 Gbits/s on TCP transmit, or 18.2 Gbits/s on TCP receive using 8Kbytes messages and 145 connections.

For TCP transmit, the CPU efficiency (measured by Gbps/GHz) of NIU is 23% higher than PCI-e NIC at maximum throughput for 2 ports, and 46% higher at maximum throughput for 1 port.

(read more)

10 Things IBM Likes About Solaris 10

From IBM's Web, here are Ten Things to know about Solaris 10:

1. Great Product
   $500M and 3000 engineering years of R&D investment have resulted in the most advanced operating system on the planet.
2. Great Price
   Use Solaris 10 commercially, in production, for FREE.
3. Open Source
   Sun released the Solaris OS - millions of lines of code - to the open source community via opensolaris.org
4. Application Compatibility Guarantee
   Guaranteed binary compatibility from release to release of Solaris and source compatibility between SPARC and x64/x86 processors
5. One Solaris
   Same code base on x64, x86 and SPARC-based systems.
6. Most secure OS on the planet
   80% of Trusted Solaris features now in Solaris 10, including Process Rights Management and Secure Execution
7. DTrace
   Designed to be used on live production systems; Offers application performance improvements of up to 50X in matter of hours
8. Solaris Containers
   Complete application fault and security isolation with workload management and virtualization
9. Predictive Self-Healing
   Predicts system errors and takes failing components offline before they cause problems
10. Runs open source applications
    188 of the leading open source packages are included, pre-compiled and ready to go (1,500 t0 2,000 more can be downloaded from blastwave.org )
    

Try and Buy New Sun Servers

Sun has a try and buy program that allows you to get a product for 60 days with no obligation to buy. It has been a very successful program for Sun, Sun Resellers and customers. I've heard Sun executives say that more than 60% of the people who participate in this program end up buying the product they evaluated.

For Sun Resellers the try and buy program gives them a very large loaner pool which they don't have to manage! When a customer apples for a try and buy, they can say which Reseller they prefer to work with. If they convert the trial into a purchase, the order is placed through the customer's preferred Reseller with their normal terms and conditions.

Sun has several cool new servers that people want to try out:

• Sun Fire X4150
• Sun Fire X4450
• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120
• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220
• Sun Blade T6320 Server Module

The good news is that these severs will be available through the try and buy program. The bad news is that Sun has not said when. You can sign up now and be notified as soon as the server that you would like to evaluate becomes available by filling in this form which says:

Be the first to apply for a free trial once the new products are available and be queued up for priority shipping by completing the short form below. We'll be in touch via email over the coming weeks to inform you when the Try and Buy Program will begin to accept applications for free trials of these new products.

Applications: Solaris/SPARC vs AIX/Power

Paul Murphy has been looking at how customers might choose between Solaris/SPARC and AIX/Power. An important differentiator could be application availability. He concludes

So what’s the bottom line? Well, we’re not going to get definitive numbers on the ISV universe without spending a lot more time on this, but it’s probaby fair to suggest that the Solaris application base is counted in the thousands and growing where the AIX base is counted in the hundreds.

Sun does not make it easy to find their catalog of partner solutions. For an ISV (independent Software Vendor) or IHV (independent Hardware Vendor), a catalog listing is a benefit of the "Sun Partner Advantage Program". The directories with those listings can be found under

http://www.sun.com/partners

You will find entries for 3,394 Partners and 11,261 Products in the database.

In addition to those commercial applications, a growing body of free and open source solutions can be found on blastwave.org. Most of the 1,500-2,000 compiled binary packages on blastwave.org would not be consider applications in the way that Paul Murphy was writing. Many of the blastwave applications are infrastructure components and utilities such as Apache, PostgeSQL, OpenSSL, Gnome, VNC, vim. Having such a comprehensive toolbox does allow Solaris customers a lot of flexibility in getting Free and Open Source (FOSS) solutions up and running.

This is a small but growing body of FOSS enterprise applications with optional commercial support, such as SugarCRM. I am not aware of a site that has a comprehensive listing of applications like that.

Sun Sets Goal of $7 Billion in Channel Business by 2010

Touting the best product and solution portfolio in its 25-history, Sun is aimed at growing its channel business from $3 billion to $7 billion by 2010, and eventually to $10 billion, Sun executives said at this year's New Frontiers conference for Sun partners.

“We're heavily channel-focused and channel centric,” said Tom Wagner, Sun's vice-president of Americas partner sales, reported Jeff Jedras with IT Business. “We're not getting requisitions from the board of directors to go build-out a more extensive direct sales organization, that's just not in our DNA.”

Wagner says Sun is focused on real, organic growth, and not just re-routing direct business through the channel. Currently, Sun does 65 percent of its business through the channel.

“This is about creating a much bigger pie for the company," he said. "As a company we need to grow, and one of the central ways we achieve that growth is through the channel.”

One of the solutions Sun is counting on to help drive growth is its new Partner Growth Fund that will award partners with dollars, based on revenue, that can then be used to purchase equipment for in-house demonstration centers, proof of concepts and other uses.

Three years ago, Sun canceled a similar program, but partners have been requesting its return.

“When you can put that technology in front of the customers, its sold,” said Cheryl Marfia, director of U.S. partner programs for Sun. “Now partners really get to focus on building-out their solutions.”

Deal registration was also introduced as a complement to its teaming agreements program. With Sun's business focus shifting into new markets, Marfia said it was time to offer deal registration.

Summary of New Sun Servers

Sun SPARC Enterprise X5120 Server

• Rack-optimized 1-socket UltraSPARC T2 in a 1RU form factor
• Supports up to 64 simultaneous threads of execution in 8 cores
• Eight floating-point units
• Onboard cryptography
• 4 73- or 146-GB SAS disks
• Internal hardware RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring)
• 16 FBDIMM slots supporting 1, 2, and 4-GB modules
• System configurations from 4 GB (4x1GB) to 64 GB (16x4GB) of memory
• 2 independent Front Side Buses (FSB) operating at 1066 MT/s or 1333 MT/s
• 4 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet ports on-board (on two separate controllers)
  
• 1x 8 lane PCI-E and 2x 4 lane PCI-E Or XAUI cards
  
• (the XAUI card is needed to access the 10GbE)
  
• 4 USB 2.0 ports
• One, slot-loading, slimline DVD drive, supporting CD-R/W, CD+R/W, DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W
• Embedded Lights Out Manager
• Dual redundant, hot -swappable power supply
• Solaris 10 Operating System 8/07
• Logical Domains Manager 1.0.1
  

Sun SPARC Enterprise X5220 Server

• Rack-optimized 1-socket UltraSPARC T2 in a 2RU form factor
• Supports up to 64 simultaneous threads of execution in 8 cores
• Eight floating-point units
• Onboard cryptography
• 8 SAS Disk Drives
• Internal hardware RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring)
• 16 DIMM slots for Fully Buffered DDR2 DIMMs
• System configurations from 4 GB (4x1GB) to 64 GB (16x4GB) of memory
• Two to four Dual-Core or Quad-Core Intel Xeon 7200/7300 Series Processors
• 4 independent Front Side Buses (FSB) operating at 1066 MT/s
  
• 4 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet ports on-board
• 6 internal MD2 Low Profile 8-lane PCI-Express slots (2 slots support the XAUI cards):
  
  • (2) 8-lane slots (both x16 mechanically)
  • (4) 4-lane slots (3 x8 mechanically, 1 x16 mechanically)
• (the XAUI card is needed to access the 10GbE)
• 4 USB 2.0 ports
• 1 slimline DVD-R/CD-RW
• Embedded Lights Out Manager
• Dual redundant, hot -swappable power supply
• Solaris 10 Operating System 8/07
• Logical Domains Manager 1.0.1

Sun Blade T6320
Server Module (for the Sun Blade 6000)

• Supports up to 64 simultaneous threads of execution in 8 cores
• Eight floating-point units
• Onboard cryptography
• 16 DIMM slots for Fully Buffered DDR2 DIMMs ( 1, 2, and 4-GB modules)
• Two 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet ports using the Intel 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet transceiver
• one dedicated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port for the management network,
• two optional 10-GB XAUI Ethernet ports
• 8 SAS Disk Drives
• Solaris 10 Operating System 8/07
• Logical Domains Manager 1.0.1

Sun Fire X4150 Server

• Rack-optimized 2-socket x64 server in a 1RU form factor
• Supports up to 2 processors (up to 8-CPU cores)
  
• 8 SAS Disk Drives
  
• 16 DIMM slots for PC2-5300 667 MHz ECC Fully Buffered DDR2 DIMMs
• System configurations from 2 GB (2x1GB) to 64 GB (16x4GB) of memory
• One or two Intel Xeon Processors:
  
  • Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 (4MB L2, 3 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W)
  • Quad-Core Intel Xeon L5310 (2x4MB L2, 1.6 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 50W)
  • Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5320 (2x4MB L2, 1.86 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 80W)
  • Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5345 (2x4MB L2, 2.33 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W)
  • Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5355 (2x4MB L2, 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 120
• 2 independent Front Side Buses (FSB) operating at 1066 MT/s or 1333 MT/s
• 4 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet ports on-board
• 3 internal Low Profile 8-lane PCI-Express slots (all with x16 mechanical connector)
• 5 USB 2.0 ports
• One EIDE DVD+/-RW drive
• Embedded Lights Out Manager
• Dual redundant, hot -swappable power supply

Sun Fire X4450 Server

• Rack-optimized 4-socket x64 server in a 2RU form factor
• Supports up to 4 processors (up to 16-CPU cores)
  
• 8 SAS Disk Drives
  
• 32 DIMM slots for PC2-5300 667 MHz ECC Fully Buffered DDR2 DIMMs
• System configurations from 2 GB (2x1GB) to 128 GB (32x4GB) of memory
• Two to four Dual-Core or Quad-Core Intel Xeon 7200/7300 Series Processors
• 4 independent Front Side Buses (FSB) operating at 1066 MT/s
  
• 4 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet ports on-board
• 6 internal MD2 Low Profile 8-lane PCI-Express slots:
  
  • (2) 8-lane slots (both x16 mechanically)
  • (4) 4-lane slots (3 x8 mechanically, 1 x16 mechanically)
• 5 USB 2.0 ports
• One EIDE DVD+/-RW drive
• Embedded Lights Out Manager
• Dual redundant, hot -swappable power supply

A Fresh Look at Datacenter Power, Cooling, and Cabling

Al Riske has written a "Contrarian Minds" article for Sun, "Not Rocket Science - A Fresh Look at Datacenter Power, Cooling, and Cabling". Dean Nelson, Director of Global Lab and Datacenter Design Services for Sun. shares many insights:

You get more compute per watt but you also have more watts per rack, and those numbers are going to continue to increase," he says. "So we're actually building the products that cause an increase in heat. If we can't solve that in our own house, how can we expect our customers solve it?"

and

The legacy thinking of power, cooling, cabling — how we used to do it — just doesn't work anymore. A raised floor and forced air? You can't properly cool stuff that way, because as you get higher in load — 4 kilowatts, 8 kilowatts, 10 kilowatts, and greater per rack — you just can't get the cooling where you need it. Air is coming up the vents, but you can't specify that this rack is 2 kilowatts and that one is 4 kilowatts, so you have hot spots all over the place."

By consolidating into fewer, energy efficient datacenters, and compressing 152 datacenters (202,000 square feet) at various California locations into 14 new centers (76,000 square feet) in Santa Clara, Sun was able to reduce real estate costs by 88% and power consumption by 60% for a saving of $860k in the first 9 months.

More Sun Blog Posts

Server Based Computing (SBC) & Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

see also
New Sun Desktop Virtualization Software Improves Desktop Security and Ease of Management

"Sun Virtual Desktop Access Kit for VMware" Sun BluePrints Document

Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.31 Available for Download

Secure Global Desktop FAQ

UltraSPARC T2 crypto performance outstrips traditional processors

Digital repositories and Honeycomb

Honeycomb is the Sun StorageTek 5800

Logical Domains (LDoms) 1.0.1 available

PHP5 is in OpenSolaris

Links to some recent Sun Blog Posting

• BUSTED! 11 Myths about Solaris on X86/X64 platforms
  
  
• Sun and VMware webcast about VDI
  
  
• QFS and Lustre File System Updates by Marc Hamilton
  
  
• 26 Reasons to Love Open-Source Software
  
  
• The Sun Labs Virtual Tour
  
  
• Open Provisioning Toolkit Launched - OpenPTK
  
  
• New CoolThreads servers for IBM WebSphere

Recent Sun Technical Videos

Breakthrough and Innovative Design
10/09/07 via RSS

Sun delivers the next big breakthrough in innovative system design with next-generation CMT and x64 servers and blades.


Sun Blade T6320 System Walk Through
10/09/07 via RSS

Have a look inside the new Sun Blade T6320 server module and explore its design features in detail.

UtraSPARC T2 Server Benchmark Results

SPECjAppServer2004 World Record Single-Application server Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 and a Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (Oracle database server)

• This result used a Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Application Server (single UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz) and a Sun T5120 Server Database System (single UltraSPARC T2 1.2GHz)
• Delivered better results that two Rackable servers, each with 2 sockets with quad core Xeon chips
• Delivered better results that two IBM POWER servers
  
• (read more)

Sun SPARC Enterprise T6320 SPECint_rate2006 Single-Chip World Record

• Used the UltraSPARC T2 blade - T6320 - in a Sun Blade 6000
• Beats the best single IBM 4.7 GHz dual-core POWER6 processor result by 29%
• Beat the best published single 3 GHz Xeon quad-core by 28% on SPECint_rate2006
• Beats the best single IBM 4.7 GHz dual-core POWER6 processor result by 29%
• (read more)

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 World Record Single-JVM Single Chip Performance with SPECjbb2005 server-side Java benchmark

• Best single-JVM single chip results on the SPECjbb2005 server-side Java benchmark
• Beat all single-JVM results from Dell and HP, and all 8-core or less single-JVM results from IBM
• The Sun T5120 server (single UltraSPARC T2) demonstrated 1.9X better performance over the 2-core 4.7GHz IBM p570 (POWER6)
• (read more)

SPECweb2005 benchmark results

• Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 obtained a world record SPECweb2005 result 37,001 SPECweb2005 with one UltraSPARC T2 running Solaris 10 with Sun Java System Web Server
• T5220 server delivers 22% greater performance than the four-socket HP ProLiant DL580 G5 with 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Xeon processors
• There are no IBM POWER6 results on the SPECweb benchmark
• (read more)

World Record ERP SAP-SD 2-Tier ECC 6.0 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120

• Best 1 processor, two SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server (1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2) outperformed the 4-core IBM System p570 (4.7 GHz POWER6) by 7%. The 4RU IBM p570 POWER6 is 4 times larger than the 1RU Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 system
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server (1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2) outperformed the HP BL460C with two 3 GHz Xeon quad-core processors by 5%
• (read more)

World Record Lotus Domino R6iNotes Sun SPARC Enterprise 5220

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (one UltraSPARC T2), using Lotus Domino 7.0.1 mail server delivered industry-leading results with best per-socket performance and best power-performance for the Lotus[R] R6iNotes on Domino mail server benchmark
• Sun SE T5220 has similar results to an 8 process UltraSPARC IV+ 1.8GHZ V890 at less than half the cost per user
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 performed 2.3x faster than the dual-core HP Proliant DL580 and achieved 30% less price/performance

UltraSPARC T2 - SPEComp floating-point single-chip record

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers the best performance on the SPEC OMPM2001 benchmark for a single chip.
• (read more)
  

SPEC CPU2006 UltraSPARC T2 -T5120/T5220

• SPECint_rate2006 Peak 78.5; Base 73.0
• SPECfp_rate2006 Peak 62.3; Base 57.9
• (read more)

Ultra-FAST Cryptography on the Sun UltraSPARC T2

• A single Sun UltraSPARC T2 processor achieves up to 37,000 RSA 1024-bit signs/s and up to 38.9 Gbit/s of AES-128 throughput
• The UltraSPARC T2 delivers over 4.1 times greater RSA1024 performance and 4.6 times greater AES128 performance than the 2-way quad-core 3 GHz Xeon.
• (read more)

UltraSPARC T2 and its Network Interface Unit

• TX: 14.6 Gb/s
• RX 18.2 Gb/s
• (read more)

Most Popular Articles from "System News For Sun Users" Vol 116 Issue 1

Each week, we determine which articles have been most frequently referenced by logged-in subscribers to provide you with a list of the most popular articles for each of the last 4 issues.

Top Ten Articles for Vol 116 Issue 1

• Run Windows and Windows Apps on Solaris OS with Win4Solaris [18691]
• Download Now Available for Solaris Performance Tools CD 3.0 [18654]
• OpenSolaris Build 75 Supports xVM Platform on x86 and x64 Systems [18675]
• Ian Murdock Tantalizes Recent Forum with Project Indiana Tidbits [18677]
• Cheat Sheets Available for Sun Certified System Administrator Exam [18649]
• OpenSolaris Zone Manager Project Aims to Simplify its Creation and Management [18670]
• Sun Merges Storage and Server Groups into New Systems Team [18724]
• Solaris 10 for Opteron Supported for Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5 [18716]
• Sun Completes Acquistion of Cluster File Systems [18744]
• Sun Offering ClearSpeed's Advance Accelerator Boards [18704]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 4

• Performance Tests Compare Sun Fire V480 and T2000 Servers [18672]

Top Articles for Vol 115 Issue 3

• Sun Execs Detail Reasons Behind Sun's New Agreement with Microsoft [18651]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 2

• Update Now Available: Solaris 10 8/07 OS [18625]

A Million Page Views per Year by 200k+ Visitors

SNI has been using Google Analytics to track visits to http://sun.systemnews.com. Since the start of 2007, some 212,000 unique visitors have looked at just under 600,000 pages on the site. Just under 72,000 of those unique visitors came directly to the site (27%) while 1,900 other sites referred 5% of the unique visitors. Search engines like the rich, fresh content in the site, so it is no surprise that 68% of the visitors were referred to the site by search engines.

The browsers used to access the site (as a percentage): IE - 51%, FireFox - 38%, Mozilla - 5%, Safari - 3%, Opera - 1%

The traffic to the site has been increasing. During the last 4 weeks, 49,874 unique visitors looked at 110,429 pages. If that rate continues, SNI will easily exceed one million page views per year.

Each day, between 700 and 3,000 unique visitors come to sun.systemnews.com. As the news articles are posted on a weekly basis, we see a spike on Mondays as people read the newsletters that were delivered to them by email or RSS with Saturday being the weekly low spots.

SNI will continue to make improvement to the web site that will make it more valuable and attractive to visitors.

Sun Java System Directory Server 6.0 as an LDAP Naming Service

A four-part feature articles on BigAdmin, "Sun Java System Directory Server 6.0 as an LDAP Naming Service", describes in great detail how to setup JSDE 6.0 as and LDAP naming service for Solaris 8, 9 and 10 clients.

To create a robust, highly available directory service, 2 servers are configured at one site and 2 more at a secondary site:





There are many users and advantages to using LDAP as a naming service over NIS or individually managed servers:

• Centralized administration of users who log in to AIX, Linux, and Solaris servers and workstations
• Groups of users can be created and managed in a centralized repository
  
• Password policies governing user passwords are centralized and enforced
  
• Netgroups can be used to restrict user access to specified servers and workstations
• Policies governing inactive users
• Repository provides high failover capability and high availability

This article makes a number of assumptions

• Directory Server version 6.0 is installed on the four directory servers, which run the Solaris 10 OS with all the required patches.
• SSL will be used for all communication between the directory servers and between the directory servers and the AIX, Linux, and Solaris OS clients.
• There is no existing NIS/NIS+ environment.
• You will consolidate user data from the local /etc/passwd and /etc/group files on all native LDAP clients, and you will enforce uidNumber uniqueness.
• The pam_ldap Solaris pluggable authentication module (PAM) is used exclusively for directory users and account management.
• Netgroups will be used to control user access to any server managed by the Directory Server naming service.

The article is presented in the following four parts:

• Part 1 -- Installation and Configuration
• Part 2 -- Client Configurations for the Solaris OS
• Part 3 -- Client Configurations for Red Hat Linux and AIX
• Part 4 -- Post-Configuration Tasks

BuinessWeek - Solaris Certainly has a Future

In the BusinessWeek column, "The Tech Beat", Peter Burrows reports that there are "Surprising Signs of Life For Solaris". He used to ask where are the killer Solaris-compliant apps?". Now

... an interesting thing happened as I did the reporting: I kept running into examples of people who were using Solaris again.

Peter gives the example of SmugMug and Ning, Marc Andreesen's social networking start-up using Solaris rather than Linux. John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, also told him, "how impressed he is with Solaris, and with Schwartz". Schwartz gave a keynote at a recent Sugar's developer conference. Roberts said,

There was a lot of good will in the room [towards Sun], that's for sure ... Solaris certainly has a future.

FileBench in OpenSolaris

FileBench, a systems for benchmarking filesystems, is now part of OpenSolaris. See the project page for details. FileBench was developed by Richard McDougall, Joshua Crase and Shawn Debnath. FileBench is available at sourceforge.

You can use FileBench to define benchmarks that have the same characteristics as your own applications. You could then run those benchmarks on different systems or configurations (direct attach vs SAN; tier 1 SAN vs tier 2 SAN; volume manager vs volume manager; disk layout against disk layout) to find optimal configurations. Much better than "time dd if=......"!

Eric Kustarz describes FileBench in his blog:

So how does FileBench differ? FileBench is a framework of file system workloads for measuring and comparing file system performance. The key is in the workloads. FileBench has a simple .f language that allows you to describe and build workloads to simulate applications. You can create workloads to replace all the pre-mentioned benchmarks. But more importantly, you can create workloads to simulate complex applications such as a database. For instance, i didn't have to buy an Oracle license nor figure out how to install it on my system to find out if my changes to the vdev cache for ZFS helped database performance or not. I just used FileBench and its 'oltp.f' workload.

FileBench is an active project. You are encouraged to use it and help make it better. If you have questions, please ask them in the perf-discuss forum (perf-discuss AT opensolaris DOT org). A slightly out-dated quickstart guide is available.

There are some scripts for specific workload, such as oltp and randomread and more details about using FileBench on the Solaris Internals Wiki.

Most Popular Articles from "System News For Sun Users" Vol 115 Issue 4

Each week, we determine which articles have been most frequently referenced by logged-in subscribers to provide you with a list of the most popular articles for each of the last 4 issues.

Top Ten Articles for Vol 115 Issue 4

• Performance Tests Compare Sun Fire V480 and T2000 Servers [18672]
• Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software Could Ease Customers' Vista Woes [18668]
• Sun's New Quad-Core x64 (x86, 64-bit) Systems [18640]
• Sun Fire X4150 and the Intel Architecture, Memory [18689]
• What's New in the Solaris 10 8/07 OS Release [18629]
• Video: Sun and Intel Execs Introduce New Intel-Based Systems [18690]
• Solaris Express Developer Edition 9/07 Software [18676]
• What Does Retirement Phase 1 Mean for the Solaris 8 OS? [18664]
• Gartner Likes What It Sees of Sun's GNU/Linux Efforts [18665]
• Sun Launches OpenEco.org as It's Named Best in Class in Approach to Climate Change [18684]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 3

• Sun Execs Detail Reasons Behind Sun's New Agreement with Microsoft [18651]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 2

• Update Now Available: Solaris 10 8/07 OS [18625]

Top Article for Vol 115 Issue 1

• Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 7300 Series Platform Previewed [18608]

Mark Hamilton on Sun xVM

Sun, in the person of Mark Hamilton, is talking about the open, cross-platform Sun xVM Server. For x86 machines, the hypervisor based on Xen. For new SPARC systems (Sun4v), Sun will use the LDOM hypervisor. Both will support multiple operating systems. (Windows, a well known but proprietary operating system from Microsoft, is tied to the x86 architecture).

Mark has started to talk about Sun xVM Ops Center which is

a highly scalable, full stack management tool to manage thousands of hardware and software entities. Sun xVM Ops Center will be one of the first tools to manage both your physical and virtual environments. Other virtualization management tools may be able to restart your VM when you have a DIMM failure, but then you need to switch to a different management tool to actually find the machine where the physical failure occurred. With Sun xVM Ops Center, you can do that all with one consistent management tool.

According to a report in eWeek, Ops Center is expected to be available in December. In that report, Tim Marsland, Sun's CTO for software, observes that GPL issues do not arise as the Xen-based hypervisor and guest operating systems - Windows, Linux etc. - all run in their own address space.

An interesting aspect of open source project is that those who care to see a project evolve in development can peek inside the community site and see the sausages being made. Look for the link Flag day: Solaris xVM Solaris on Xen in the list of build-by-build Heads-Ups and Project Integration History page for OpenSolaris.

ITPRO reports:

The Sun xVM hypervisor will be on general release by the second quarter next year, but will have two previews, the first by the end of this year and the second by May 2008. The system is already available in the Open Solaris community, but will be released as a separate commercial product from Sun.

In the meantime, Sun continues to team with VMware. As Sun's x86 portfolio continues to expand, many non-Solaris users are finding VMware to be very effective on Sun hardware. Being able to also sell the Windows licenses just makes too much sense for Sun (says the guy who learned to edit files with ed(1) and a hard-copy terminal and SunOS with SunView on a 3/50 with 1 Mb of RAM and a mllion pixels.)

Sun Over Dell for x86 Servers

Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) conducted a survey of enterprise customers asking about their preference for vendors of x86 products. They said

"We continue to be impressed by just how many customers have Sun x86 gear in their datacenters ... Even more surprising is how consistently Sun is ranked ahead of Dell on almost every survey criteria. This is pretty good progress for a vendor who has only been in the x86 server market for a few years and still offers a limited product line,"

Overall, the traditional, well established x86 vendors, IBM and HP, ranked #1 and #2.

Some of the concerns express by the people who took the survey include

• power and floor space
• virtualization
• acquiring fewer, but larger, x86 systems
• dealing with products from multiple vendors

Sun StorageTek 9990v SPC/1 Results

Sun has submitted results for the Storage Performance Council (SPC) SPC-1 benchmark for the Sun StorageTek 9990v. Those results show

Tested Storage Configuration (TSC) Name:
Sun StorageTek® 9990V
SPC-1 IOPS
200,245.73
SPC-1 Price performance
$17.31/SPC-1 IOPS
Total ASU Capacity
26,000 GB
Protection Level
Mirroring
Total TSC Price (including three-year maintenance)
$3,466,309

This test was driven by an IBM P5 595.

Oct 9th Launch: Sun's Value of Design Innovation

I received an invitation from Sun to attend a live webcast of Sun's next major product launch:

SAVE THE DATE!

Is massive network growth making your datacenter inefficient and too complex to manage effectively? Are you reaching capacity limits on space, power, and cooling? Are you being asked to support more data, users, applications — and to provide more services — with less budget? Join us on October 9 to find out how Sun can help.

Learn how Sun's highly efficient, innovatively designed and open systems and technologies can help you virtualize your datacenter, maximize efficiency, increase utilization and scale, while using less energy, reducing IT footprint, and saving you money.

Event: Sun's Value of Design Innovation Launch
Date: October 9, 2007
Time: 10:25 a.m. PDT
Location: http://sun.com/launch LIVE OCT 9, 2007

Join John Fowler, Executive Vice President, Systems, Andy Bechtolsheim, Chief Architect and Senior Vice President, Systems; and other Sun and partner executives to learn about new, innovative systems and technologies that can help you to respond faster, scale higher, and operate more efficiently.

If you have any questions or feedback, please send a message to sun-webevent@sun.com.

Sun's Systems Group

Jonathan Schwartz announced in his blog that Sun's Server and Storage groups will be merged into a single Systems Group. He cites the success of merging the x64 and SPARC groups.
eWeek reports that John Fowler, EVP of the previous system group, will lead the new group.

John Webster, principal IT advisor at Illuminata, suggests that Sun is trying to leverage it's Solaris IP. Jonathan make that clear:

We're heading to a general purpose world - in which open and general purpose platforms will be the dominant drivers of growth, for us and the market broadly. The first general purpose storage system from Sun was Thumper (our x4500) - powered by an open source operating system (Solaris), and file system (ZFS - soon to be parallelized by Lustre, a recent acquisition from Cluster File Systems). Thumper rocketed to a $100,000,000 annual runrate within its first two full quarters of shipment (on a $13 billion dollar revenue base)

In the spirit of Green and Eco-friendly technology, Jonathan also raised the bar by recycling a classic Sun slogan:

Now's a great time to put all the wood behind one arrowhead.

And more seriously

Tape, with effective indexing and retrieval, represents the most economically responsible (that is, eco-responsible) archive platform for long term storage. Broadly speaking, tape (and in the future, other forms of removeable media) are a core part of Sun's archive plans.

An audio cast of the briefing where John Fowler makes the announcement about this organization change is on-line.

Is Windows an energy hog?

Robert L. Mitchell, writing in ComputerWorld asks, "Not so green computing: Is Windows an energy hog?" A Sun customer, Mallory Forbes, senior vice president and manager of mainframe technology at Regions Financial Corp. in Birmingham, AL, says, "The utilization rates for our Windows boxes are dramatically lower than for our Unix boxes".

UNIX boxes tend to be more expensive than Windows boxes. They are also better at multi-tasking, so it is not surprising that people try to get more out of their UNIX boxes (because of the cost) and that they are able to do so (because of the legacy of time-sharing). It is not unusual to find Windows shops with a one-box, one-application strategy.

With Virtualization technique like LDoms and Solaris Containers, UNIX managers should be able to keep those utilizations rate high. Windows users can now use VMware (and soon xVM) to consolidate lots of Windows energy hogs into nice efficient, powerful servers like the Sun Blade 6000 or the new Sun Fire X4150.