Fabric7 Tweaks Opteron Servers, Adds Windows and Solaris Support

Published: July 18, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Upstart Silicon Valley server maker Fabric7 Systems this week is, like Sun Microsystems, trying to push the Opteron envelope a little further. As promised, Fabric7 this week is announcing support of Microsoft's Windows operating system in its Q80, which it had promised to do last year when it launched the machines running Linux. And, bowing to pressure from some customers, the company is also supporting Solaris on its Q80 machines, too.

In addition to the new operating system support, Fabric7 also made some enhancements to its hardware in both the Q80 and the more sophisticated Q160 server.

The Q80, you will remember, is an eight-socket machine that supports single- and dual-core Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices. The server fits in a 6U form factor and rather than relying on third-party virtualization products, it includes Fabric7's own mix of hardware-assisted virtualization, called Q-Par, which allows the machine to be carved up into multiple two-socket and four-socket partitions on the fly. This machine has normal I/O, including eight PCI-X slots and eight Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Q160, which is the higher-end machine, includes more sophisticated virtualized I/O, which can feed up to 112 interfaces to the central processor and memory complex with up to 40 Gb/sec of bandwidth. The Q160 has a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network switch embedded and virtualized in its chassis, so it can handle the extra load; the virtualized I/O can create Fibre Channel links as well. The Q160 can also have multiple Q80s linked into it--that's the fabric part of the Fabric7 name--and the whole shebang can be managed from a single Q-Visor system management console.

Pricing for the Q80 starts at $28,700 for four single-core Opterons, 8 GB of memory, two and 73 GB disks, and rises to $109,700 for eight dual-core Opterons, 128 GB of memory, and eight 73 GB disks. A base Q160 costs $144,000, which presumably has minimal memory and disk.

The Q160 differs from the Q80 in that it allows companies to put up to three application service modules--two-socket Opteron-based boards that can handle SSL or user-specific co-processing. It is these co-processors, promised last year, that Fabric7 is rolling out this week. In addition to supplying raw co-processors, Fabric7 has partnered with Zeus Technology to preload SSL encryption and load balancing software stacks on these application service modules and save customers the trouble of having to do this themselves. These modules cost in the range of $28,700, according to Sharad Mehrotra, chief executive officer at Fabric7.

The Q160 now also supports up to 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports, a big increase from the 10 ports it supported before. In addition to these enhancements, perhaps the most interesting new bit of hardware for the Q160 is that the company has delivered on its promised Fibre Channel gateway. Up until now, Fabric7 has been supporting direct Fibre Channel links, but now with the gateway, the Fibre Channel links are virtualized and the gateway acts as a giant conduit to steer traffic between the Q160 server and the attached SANs.

On the operating system front, the 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition releases have been certified on the Q80 box, as has Sun's Solaris 10 Unix variant. Solaris 10 has been running in the labs for a while and Fabric7 has been running SPECjbb benchmarks to test the performance of the machines. The company has early versions of Microsoft's "Longhorn" server running on its boxes, too. 64-bit Linux instances are also supported, and 32-bit applications can run on the machines as well.

Right now, according to Mehrotra, Linux is the only operating system supported on the Q160, but Windows is next up on the list. The virtualized I/O features make support more tricky on the Q160 than on the Q80, he says. It remains to be seen if the Q160 will get Solaris 10 support. "We're still trying to figure out what to do about Solaris on the Q160," explains Mehrotra, adding that being a small company, the incremental cost of supporting another operating system can be large. But Solaris 10 support seems to make sense, considering that the Q160 is the box that Fabric7 really wants to sell.

Mehrotra says that the Q80 and Q160 will support the next-generation "Santa Rosa" Rev F Opterons, which are due in early August.

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