Sun Offers First Opteron Server, Two-Way Xeon Blade

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As part of its Network Computing 2004 First Quarter (NC04Q1) rollout of some 20 new products this week, Sun Microsystems will debut its first 64-bit Opteron server, the Sun Fire V20z. At press time, the details on the box were still a little thin, but given that it will only become available in April, we will have some time to get inside the box at a future date. Advanced Micro Devices is, of course, pleased that Sun, which is still a tier-one server maker, has endorsed its Opteron chip, as has IBM.

The Sun Fire V20z is a 1U form factor, rack-mounted server that has four memory slots supporting PC2700 ECC main memory. It can support two Opteron 200 Series processors, up to 16 GB of PC2700 ECC main memory, and up to two 73 GB Ultra320 SCSI disk drives. The V20z also has an integrated CD-ROM drive and has a base price of $2,795 when configured with a single Opteron processor, 1 GB of main memory, and a 36 GB disk drive. The Linux distributions from Red Hat and SuSE are both supported on the V20z, running in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode, and Solaris for X86 is available now running in 32-bit mode. Sometime this summer, Sun will roll out 64-bit support for Solaris for X86 on this and presumably a four-way and maybe even an eight-way Opteron box (call them the V40z and the V80z, and you'll probably have the names right).

At press time, Sun executives would not confirm that they were taking the V20z on an OEM basis from a third-party manufacturer. All that they would say is that Sun was working with partners to deliver this machine. Both the Newisys division of Sanmina-SCI and Celestica offer Opteron-based servers on an OEM basis to resellers like Sun. A few weeks ago at LinuxWorld, Sun and AMD executives said that they were mulling all of the options on the Sun-branded Opteron line, including making the boxes from the motherboard design up themselves. We seem to be no closer to the truth on announcement day about what Sun actually did. And for the record, just because Sun does one thing on the initial two-way design doesn't mean it won't do something else entirely down the road. IBM got its first Intel-based 1U rack server from Network Engines back in 2000, then turned around and created its own designs, leaving Network Engines in a lurch.

In addition to the new Opteron server, Sun announced a new two-way blade server based on Intel's Xeon processors, the B200x. The B200x can plug into the same 3U chassis as the B100x uniprocessor blade server that Sun announced last year. The B100x is based on the AMD Athlon XP-M 1800+ running at 1.53 GHz. None of the feeds and speeds were available on these machines at press time, but it seems unlikely that two Xeons running at around 3 GHz could be crammed in the same space as a single Athlon. A two-way B200x blade could take two or four times as much space in the BL1600 chassis, in fact.

What we do know is that the B200x server is available now, and it costs $3,790 in a base configuration.