Sun Microsystems is to position two low-end Solaris servers
featuring integrated software stacks as low-cost alternatives to
Intel servers running Linux.The company will also introduce a new family
of midrange storage products featuring its N1 virtualisation and
provisioning technologies.
The announcements are part of the quarterly
technology refreshes promised by Sun earlier this year, which will
also include several services-related announcements and price
cuts.
Sun's Sun Fire V210 and Sun Fire V240 servers
mark a fresh assault on the low end, said Gordon Haff, an analyst
at Illuminata. The systems are based on Sun's UltraSparc IIIi
Jalapeno chip, which features technologies that optimise it for use
in low-end servers.
The V210, which measures 1U (1.75 in. high),
can support two processors, up to 4GB of memory, two drive bays and
a Peripheral Component Interconnect slot. Pricing will start at
about $2,995. The V240 can support two processors, up to 8GB of
memory and features more expansion slots and disc space.
Both systems will also come with a full stack
of preintegrated software which, Sun hoped, would be a crucial
differentiator in the low-end space.
That software includes the Solaris 8 operating
system, Sun Open Net Environment (One) application server, Sun One
Active Server Pages software, Sun One messaging server for 200
mailboxes and Sun One directory server with up to 200,000 entries,
Haff said. Also included in the stack is Sun's SunScreen firewall
technology and basic virtual private network support.
"One of the things that Sun is certainly
trying to play up is the value they are offering with this whole
bundled approach," he said.
On the storage side, Sun's StorEdge 6120 and
StorEdge 6320 systems will be the first products in a new family of
StorEdge 6000 Fibre Channel RAID products.
The products will feature virtualisation and
provisioning technologies from the company's acquisition of Pirus
Networks last year. The technologies are aimed at letting users
boost storage resources by pooling and sharing them across multiple
applications.
"Sun is a latecomer in this space, but they
are doing a really nice job of catching up," said Anne Skamarock,
an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates.
Sun will also announce price cuts for several
of its low-end hardware products, including the Sun Fire 280R and
Sun's Sun Blade 2000 workstations.