Sun Offers First Opteron-Based Netra Server

Published: April 3, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Sun Microsystems last week introduced its first Opteron-based, rack-mounted server with the Netra packaging and certification. The Netra line is aimed at telecommunications and service provider customers who need DC power instead of AC and who have a more compact form factor than standard rack-mounted machines.

The Netra X4200 M2 is a variant of a two-socket Rev F Opteron machine in the "Galaxy" X64 server line that Sun announced in October 2006. The Netra variant of the machine is certified to meet the Network Equipment Building Standard, or NEBS, at Level 3 of the spec. And, as Sun likes to pride itself, it is not just compliant with the standard, but has been certified by independent auditors as being compliant with the standard. Many NEBS-compliant machines are not certified, apparently. In any event, in addition to having a DC power supply from end to end, a NEBS machine is only 20 inches in depth (about half the depth of a regular rack server) and has telecommunications alarming features built in.

Because of the long duty cycles at telecom companies, Sun and other suppliers of NEBS gear give a lifecycle guarantee that a box will be supported for a long time compared to general purpose machines. In the case of the Netra boxes, according to Baljeet Grewal, senior product line manager for Netra systems at Sun, Netra machines typically have a three- to five-year production life, with support available for at least another five years following that. For this extra work, Sun can charge a 5 to 15 percent premium on the iron compared to standard Sparc and X64 servers with the same basic features. Sun offers Netra machines in rack form factors as well as in a special blade server form factor called AdvancedTCA, or ACTA, that has been adopted by the telecommunications industry. ACTA blades are not compatible with commercial blade servers.

The Netra X4200 M2 comes in a 2U form factor and can have up to four 146 GB SAS disk drives. Sun is finally embracing the Highly Efficient, or HE, variants of the Opteron processor in a server line, and in this case has deployed the dual-core Opteron 2214 HE processor, which runs at 2.2 GHz. Because the HE chips run at a lower voltage, they have a thermal design point of 68 watts, compared to 95 watts for regular Rev F parts. The Netra X4200 M2 can have up to 32 GB of main memory, and has four Gigabit Ethernet ports. The machine will also support for a future 10 Gigabit multithreaded network card coming from Sun. Solaris is supported on the box, and for the first time, Sun is supporting Linux (both from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9) as well as Windows Server 2003 on a Netra machine. Sun is working to get RHEL 5 and SUSE 10 certified on the boxes, since it wants any customer looking for any operating system (including Solaris 10, of course) to be able to choose a Sun Netra server.

A base machine Netra X4200 M2 with two Opteron 2214s (that's four cores), 8 GB of main memory, and two 146 GB disks costs $9,845. It is available through Sun and resellers now, and will be available through Sun's online store in May. Sun is also planning to release a variant of this Netra box with only one processor in it (but still having two CPU slots) for a lower price tag of $6,145.

Last September, Sun added its "Niagara" Sparc T1 multithreaded processor for the Netra rack and ACTA blade servers, and in April last year it launched an Opteron-based ACTA blade. While Sun could technically rejigger its commercial X4600 blade server to be NEBS compliant, Grewal says that Sun has no plans to do this. "For our marketplace, ACTA is the blade form factor," she says. The 10 Gigabit Ethernet card will start out on this new Netra box first, and will eventually be offered across the Netra line throughout 2007.

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