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Sun Microsystems Hardware

Sun Announces New x86 Servers 294

Posted by michael from the slumming-with-linux dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sun announced the new V60x and V65x servers (1U and 2U respectively). The 1U has 2.8GHz Xeon CPUs and the 2U has 3.06GHz Xeon CPUs. They also announced a partnership with RedHat and Oracle running on these boxes. RedHat will also start shipping Sun's Java with their distribution."
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Sun Announces New x86 Servers More

Sun Announces New x86 Servers

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  • Sun and X86 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bame Flait ( 672982 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:03PM (#5999469)
    I'm eagerly awaiting their move into adult markets with XXX86 servers. And Windows XXXP support!

    Incidentally, Pr0stx0r fr1stx0r

    Bitches

  • wow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by banka ( 464527 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:04PM (#5999476) Homepage
    is this a ditch effort by sun to stay alive? it seems as though they've just been slipping away in recent years; they had the "One" platform of ubiquotous distributed computing and then that sort of disappeared, are we going to see the end of solaris soon?
    • SunOne is still alive and kicking. It may not be as big as WebLogic or Websphere but they have some market share. Like 10% or so...

    • Re:wow (Score:3, Funny)

      by andy1307 ( 656570 ) *
      they had the "One" platform

      Sun-One as in Sun and their stock price a year from now...

    • Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by adam872 ( 652411 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:53PM (#6000288)
      I think this is actually a smart move on Sun's part. For several years, Dell, IBM, Compaq have been taking away market share at the low end from Sun. Now they at least have a product that can compete in the commodity space, where price is the overriding factor. It also means they have products all the way from the low end to the mainframe class like the E15k. Even if they only sell a small number of boxes, it will be better than they have been getting before.

      As an IT manager, this is great, because I can buy Sun everything if I want to, which makes purchasing and maintenance easier. I can also push for a better volume discount if I want. Better still, at the low end, there's no vendor lock in, as I can run Open Source software under Linux. I also get the choice of Solaris x86 or Redhat. My experiences with the build quality of Sun equipment would give me some confidence too.

      I think this is good for the customer and Sun. About time, I say...

    • Competing Solaris against Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:57PM (#6000323)
      are we going to see the end of solaris soon?

      Absolutely not the end of Solaris. Sun is shifting some of their focus (if not most) from producing hardware to being a software and services company. Although this was announced along with the Red Hat deal, this is actually an attempt by Sun to compete Solaris against Linux at the low end. Sun is basically admitting and re-acting to what people have been saying for months (if not years) - Linux has been eating at Solaris by replacing high-cost sparcs with low cost x86.

      The Red Hat deal is an obfuscation. The real aim here is to co-opt Linux by having current Solaris shops stay with Solaris. Lots of these shops that would have replaced the Sparc/Solaris platform with Linux are now going to be induced to stay with Solaris on x86. Sun figures that it is better to sell Solaris services without Sparc than to sell nothing at all.

      Up until now, Solaris on x86 was always a "redheaded stepchild" at Sun. The hardware support was terrible and limited (very few video cards, for example). Hopefully, Sun will now give x86 good hardware support.

      • Re:Competing Solaris against Linux (Score:4, Informative)

        by akuma(x86) ( 224898 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:32PM (#6001896)
        I agree that this is a good way for Sun to make money in the computer business. Solaris is better than Linux at certain things and that will differentiate Sun enough for customers to go with them.

        Beware the Linux distributions that come out of Sun. It is in their interests to make it look bad compared with Solaris. They tried the same thing with x86 Solaris. They made it so crappy to try to convince customers to switch their hardware from x86 to Sparc.

        Hardware (servers in particular) are becoming more and more commodity-like as standard components work their way up the enterprise stack. Sun can't play there, they're too inefficient compared with a company like Dell that has much lower overhead - Dell has minimal inventory and just about 0 R&D cost. In a commodity market the leanest players win and Sun is a big fat pig.

        Go with software and services. It works for IBM.

  • "An anonymous reader" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:05PM (#5999481)
    From 68-248.sun.com

  • Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikael ( 484 ) * on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:06PM (#5999489)
    Remember when the x86 workstations began to eat into SGIs bottom line? They responded with building x86 workstations. The same thing is happening to Sun. Their SPARC servers are not keeping up with x86 servers, just as SGI IRIX/MIPS workstations began to lag in performance.

    Now before the slashdot crowd begins to scream "But hey! The Sun Fire V480 is really fast!", remember that it is $19,995.00 in the base configuration. You'll get 10 IBM rack servers for the same price. In a clustered enterprise situation 20 3GHz Xeon will perform better than 2 900MHz UltraSPARC. Especially if we are talking Java.

    Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.

    Now they are competing head to head with Dell in the x86 arena. This is a bold move. Wonder how long they will last.
    • It wasn't building x86 stuff the wiped out SGI into what it is today. It was trying to build NT workstations, and not realizing they couldn't ride the graphics gravy train forever.

      • Re:SGI didn't see the signs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:23PM (#5999601)
        Actually it was the incompetent management of Mr. Beluzzo who wanted to force feed NT down SGI's throats. SGI had long moved from the "graphics gravy train" and were making inroads in the Super and server markets. Mr. Belluzzo or whatever the spelling of his name is tried to move towards NT when SGI still had a technological lead, plust it made disasterours alliances with Microsoft (they gave tons of IP to Redmond for mere peanuts).

        Incidentally Belluzo left SGI after almost running it to the ground, and jooined Microsoft right away, some people think that he was on M$ payroll even while he was destroying, er I mean managing SGI. Coincidende?

        Every major company that has got in bed with M$ and based their business on NT offerings is either dead or dying: Intergraph, DEC, etc. etc..

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sisukapalli1 ( 471175 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:11PM (#5999528)
      SGI ditched their core IRIX. They started moving towards NT on their machines. So, the analogy does not apply directly here.

      Furthermore, regarding competing with Dell in the x86 arena, the redhat/sun/oracle partnership has some chance of becoming stronger than redhat/dell partnership.

      Well, we will have to wait and see. I think sun is a good company -- and teaming up with oracle and redhat can't be a bad move at this point.

      S

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Informative)

      by phraktyl ( 92649 ) <wyattNO@SPAMdraggoo.com> on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:21PM (#5999591) Homepage Journal

      I've actually been looking at Sun's new entry level servers, the v210 [sun.com] and v240 [sun.com] servers.

      The v210 starts at $2,995US, and the large configuration, with 2 1Ghz UltraSparc IIIi processors, 2GB of RAM, 2 36GB 10,000RPM SCSI-III drives, and 4 10/100/1000 network intarfaces comes in at $5,795US. I've seen comparible x86-based servers for more than that.

      • Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)

        by moogla ( 118134 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:49PM (#5999780) Homepage Journal
        While it is a very cool system... (incl. the 4 network interfaces), 1 GHz UltraSparc IIIis are slow, and they don't have the extra benefit of tons of cache compared to the regular US3. The RAM is only SDRAM (still), and 72GB of space is paltry.

        So, if you absolutely need a SPARCv9 architecture rackmount, this is the way to go. But featurewise it falls short of say an Altus 140 from Penguin Computing, or even a 1000E if you want 64-bit. And Peng. Comp. is expensive as far as that kind of thing goes.

        That being said, the small Enterprises are quite cool, but they aren't as cost effective. It helps if your organization has a pre-existing agreement, and can get you a break.

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:21PM (#5999592) Homepage Journal
      Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.

      Actually, I am seeing a number of folks either 1) migrate to or 2) seriously consider Apple's Xserve for purposes sort of in-between. The Xserve runs UNIX, it is absurdly easy to manage, they are cheap, and give pretty good performance especially when code is optimized for Altivec. Add to that the power consumption (or rather lack thereof), and for large numbers of servers, the Xserve becomes even more attractive in terms of lower electricity and cooling costs.

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by maitas ( 98290 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:26PM (#5999619) Homepage
      > In a clustered enterprise situation 20 3GHz Xeon will perform better than 2 900MHz UltraSPARC. Especially if we are talking Java.

      Well... show me one real application benchmark (like SAP or ORACLE apps., not TPC-C) where 10 one CPU machines has 9x times the performance of single of those same machines and I belive your speach. Currently, there's now paralell database that supports massive inserts using more than 2 nodes.
      Clearly http://c-jdbc.objectweb.org/ looks promising, but there's still the problem of "order by" queries, since eahc node will answer its own order and the final appended result won't be valid.
      Latency is the name of the game, with Ethernet in 10s of miliseconds and memory in the 10s of nanoseconds, there will always be a huge penalty for sincronization through network.
      There's alway ways to add throughput (http://geocities.com/feromus/db-scalability.html) but latency will always have to increase...

      • but you have to buy 60% more to get the same performance scaling, then I think it's a reasonable inefficiency to live with.

        Latency is a different beast, but the Opteron is looking might delicious in this area right about now. We've got some test systems coming in soon so we can compare and contrast.

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EinarH ( 583836 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:26PM (#5999620) Journal
      Mod parent up, nail on head.

      To me it looks like Sun x86 are competing with Sun SPARC with this move.
      Who wants to buy a Sun Fire V240 [sun.com] at $6495 when they can this Sun Fire V65x [sun.com] at $4595?

      Lets look at the specs:
      V240 (SPARC),2U 2*1GHz UltraSPARC3, 1 MB Cache pr.CPU, 2 GB RAM max 8GB, 2 x 36 GB max 4, 4 x1Gb Ethernet, Solaris 8.

      V65x (x86),2U 2*3GHz Xeon, 512 KB Cache pr.CPU, 1 GB RAM max 12GB, 1 x 36 GB, max 6, 2 x1Gb Ethernet, Solaris 9 or Linux.

      Maybe the SPARC have better "troughput" for some applications, but it looks as if the V65x is better overall especially for CPU intensive tasks.

      Since the volume of total SPARC CPU's will go further down as more Sun machines are sold with Intel CPU's they will become even more expensive.

      • Sun has always been competing with itself - they are notorious for canibalizing its own sale with a new product. After all, it's not that surprising, considering that if they don't do it themselves, someone else will.
      • but it looks as if the V65x is better overall especially for CPU intensive tasks.

        Well x86 are CISC processors while Sparcs are RISC processors so you cant just judge by the clock speed alone, they are fundmentally different, another thing ...the architecture itself is different. the x86 architecture has indeed evolved a long way from the single user machine to the server land BUT a SUN is a SUN, did you ever wonder why is there a 2K$ gap between the lowest end Sparc and the highest end x86 machine of the

    • Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:37PM (#5999696)
      Not true. The SGI didn't have and still doesn't have IRIX on X86, so they couldn't migrate their customers successfully. If I am installing Linux or Windows on X86, why should SGI matter? On the other hand, if you need Solaris X86, it does matter. Thanks to SCO, Sun's importance is even higher. This is number one difference between DEC, SGI, HP migration to PC and Sun's.

      SGI also didn't have SGI proprietary software installed free on their x86 boxes. OTOH, Sun includes StarOffice, JDK, App Server etc.

      SGI was more expensive than Dell, HP etc... I just compared Sun offering and found that they are cheaper than even Dell.

      SGI x86 hardware (initial) was proprietary. I remember stock Linux would not install on them. Sun hardware is same as rest of X86.

    • Actually the high-end machines are heavily used to get database performance, while clustering is used predominantly for HPC (ie, FORTRAN) cores. Somewhat different markets.

      --dave (who is biased, you understand) c-b

    • that the reason is because they haven't had java running satisfactorily on sun hardware in a couple of years. It's a bit sadly ironic, but it runs *way* better on equivalent x86 servers than sun's sparc servers.
    • Its interesting to think that it could be Sun's Java that is to blame for the demise of Sun hardware to some extent. Many server sales are now for people needing servers for J2EE applications which tend to scale out instead of up. Why spend significantly more on Sun hardware to scale out when you could just throw more X86 cluster nodes at the problem and achieve similiar results for less money.
    • Of course, SGI's failure was more of execution than strategy. First, they "Osborned" themselves by not making it clear what the long-term strategy was for Irix, reducing sales of their existing product lines. They also reduced R&D on IRIX/MIPS, giving them less of a way out if the NT strategy failed.

      Then, more importantly, they built machines that were techically overambitious, with cool sounding memory technology that was a compatibilty and stability nightmare in practice. While the SGI NT boxes sound

    • Routeness (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:20PM (#5999992) Homepage Journal
      You're picking up on one little parallel (both sell x86 boxes) and inflating it into a grand paradigm. The differences are more to the point:
      • Sun sneers at x86 workstations. SGI would like to sell x86 workstations, but waited too long to enter the market.
      • Sun used to talk about doing Itanium boxes, but lost interest. SGI's put a lot of effort into its Altix servers [sgi.com].
      • Sun has an x86 rackmount business, SGI does not. Though I often wonder how serious Sun is about this business. I've noticed that people who were customers when it was a separate company called Cobalt are not happy with the new management. And you'll notice that Sun has two or three Sparc rackmount models for every one x86 model.
      • Sun still has a huge Sparc development operation, and still uses Sparc exclusively in most of its products. SGI has spun off MIPS, and supposedly plans to give "commodity" systems equal priority -- though MIPS-based systems still dominate their product line.

      • Re:Routeness (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SLot ( 82781 )
        Sun has an x86 rackmount business, SGI does not. Though I often wonder how serious Sun is about this business. I've noticed that people who were customers when it was a separate company called Cobalt are not happy with the new management. And you'll notice that Sun has two or three Sparc rackmount models for every one x86 model.

        While I know you are talking about the Raq's, a lot of the earlier models from Cobalt are still around - Raq2, Qube2 & 2700. And you were right, I got so sick of waiting on

  • Why not.. Follow SGI (Score:5, Funny)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:06PM (#5999490) Homepage
    Wow.. I mean it worked so well for SGI, its a wonder everyone doesn't realease servers like this..

  • This could make life easy for redhat users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sisukapalli1 ( 471175 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:07PM (#5999502)
    Having the latest versions JDK and also J2EE SDK built in with the system may mean that the Apache Tomcat/ant and other things will also come bundled with redhat (and most likely pre-configured just like mod_perl and mod_php).

    A brand new installation of redhat can then run things like servlets, jsps, etc., just like we can now run mod_perl and all that without end users having to build and install it.

    S
    • sure and when you think of it, when a distro already needs 5 cd's, what's one more?
    • The main reason I think Red Hat have not shipped Java before is that Suns JVM is not free. There is a free implementation of java in the form of gcj and GNU Classpath, I'm guessing that is not being used because this is a Sun-specific version of RHL.

      Nonetheless, considering that they've indirectly funded the development of a free Java implementation, it's a pity it wasn't used.

    • Yes, and hopefully they'll follow some sane packaging standards like these [jpackage.org] found here [jpackage.org]

    • This is only for RedHat Enterprise Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by miniver ( 1839 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @03:58PM (#6001000) Homepage

      If you look at Sun's press release about Red Hat [sun.com] you'll see that Red Hat will be including the JVM with their RH Enterprise Linux distributions ... not with Red Hat Linux, and that Sun will only be supporting RH Enterprise Linux. Why? Because Sun still won't license the JVM for redistribution. I'm not saying that Sun is wrong here (it's their toy, they get to choose the license), but this is what has been slowing the acceptance of Java on Linux with many developers. (Except for corporate Java developers -- they love it, and thus, so do I.)

      Sun's trying to balance control of Java against market acceptance, and Solaris against Linux. Sun obviously thinks that anyone who wants Java for Linux will go to the effort of downloading it from Sun, while at the same time they get to differentiate Solaris from Linux by including Java. On the other hand, Sun could hardly sell & support Linux on Sun servers without also including Java; this agreement gives them what they want without letting go of their (perceived) control of Java.

  • sun becomes a commodity vendor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by havaloc ( 50551 ) * on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:07PM (#5999504) Homepage
    Let's see. Sun decides to release commodity hardware with the option to take commodity software, and charge a non-commodity price. So what makes Sun better than say, Dell, HP or the many other commodity vendors? Sun will be finished at this rate.

    • The One Vendor Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:41PM (#5999718) Homepage Journal
      Folks like to stay on one vendor whenever possible, since it simplifies accountability issues. If you're buying big iron from Sun anyway, it may be worth picking up the mid-range and desktop from them as well. Chances are, that'd lower support costs, make it easy to find the phone number to call when something breaks and normalize quality of support. If Sun's support desk is better than Brand X (And I can tell you first hand that Brand X support sucks,) that alone might make it worth dropping a couple extra grand per machine for the brand name.

      Of course, they will be trying to beat both Dell and IBM at their own game. SGI was at the last Linux Expo I went to (A few years back now) and during their presentation I was struck by the fact that they were trying to beat IBM at their own game, and I knew IBM was going to end up being the better player. Sun has more market share, extreme java expertise and a full range of machines to choose from, so I think they have a much better chance than SGI did.

    • Re:sun becomes a commodity vendor (Score:5, Insightful)

      by teeker ( 623861 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:42PM (#5999726)
      Because not only is Sun competing with similar hardware, they are selling it for a good price. After owning examples from both manufacturers, I would bet on Sun's hardware quality (x86 or otherwise) over Dell's any day of the week. For the same price, I'll pick Sun every time.

      HP/Compaq? They're in the same league as Sun (HW quality-wise), but just spot-checking one of their ProLiant servers against the v65 configured similarly, the Sun machine is a little cheaper (no OS selected on the Compaq). Close enough to consider both. Again, after working for a company that has owned both, I still lean towards Sun as far as general hardware goodness. Hopefully this new kit lives up to that reputation.

      That's what makes Sun able to compete in this market. Good hardware at a competitive price. Obviously the rest of the "commodity vendors" find it worthwhile to be in business.

  • Who'd have thought? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by prgrmr ( 568806 )
    that is would be Sun in need of RedHat and not the reverse? This could be the combination that breaks the Microsoft desktop hegemony, if Sun and Redhat market it correctly toward that end.
    • How do you get that Sun needs RedHat? RedHat's the one adding Java to their distribution....
    • How is this going to hurt the MS strangle-hold over the desktop environment? Neither SUN or RH could compete with MS for the desktop; why would the two together be any different? If the two were to partner up and dump huge amounts of capital into developing a more robust and usable desktop there may be a chance.. But I doubt seriously that this is their intention. This may put a ding in MSs armor, but it won't affect their overall control of the desktop arena. But that's just my worthless $0.02.
      • If the two were to partner up and dump huge amounts of capital into developing a more robust and usable desktop there may be a chance.

        This is what I was meant and should have just stated. Given that this is exactly how MS got control of the desktop in the first place, it becomes one of the more obvious solutions to take that control away from them. Note that obvious != efficient.

    • Re:Who'd have thought? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )
      This could be the combination that breaks the Microsoft desktop hegemony, if Sun and Redhat market it correctly toward that end.

      Not in your lifetime. RH just isn't a good desktop distribution; Mandrake is much more polished and has fewer bugs. RH's real strength is in an enterprise envirionment. Similarly: Java is pretty weak for desktop apps (a survey of AWT, Swing and SWT should bear this out) but it's perfect for web interfaces and business logic.

      The real fight is in the server world. Java + RedHat L

  • Why sell this product? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EriktheGreen ( 660160 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:08PM (#5999511) Journal
    You'd think Sun would have learned their lesson from Sun Linux... people don't want a PC in Sun clothing any more than they want Linux with Sun logos all over it.

    Now if they'd taken the Pentium or Opteron CPUs and designed a new architecture around them, using something like the Sun Fire Fireplane backplane, that would have been more interesting. As it is, these are just a rackmount PC in a purple case.

    Erik

    • Re:Why sell this product? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:30PM (#5999649)
      people don't want a PC in Sun clothing

      Actually, they do at the low end. They don't want any old Linux though : they want Red Hat because that's what all the major (non-free, enterprise class) applications are certified to run on. Big corporations don't want a PeeCee running Joe's Homebrew Linux to run Oracle. They want something that's certified and supported. That means Red Hat on big-name hardware with 24/7 support.

    • Shift in philosophy? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:44PM (#5999740) Homepage
      You'd think Sun would have learned their lesson from Sun Linux... people don't want a PC in Sun clothing any more than they want Linux with Sun logos all over it.

      Well, that's a little different in that Sun acutally admitted that their "distro" was basically Red Hat with Sun logos thrown everywhere. They came out and basically said that this was in fact the biggest change they made. So customers, naturally, will say "why the hell am I paying for this?"

      On the other hand, if they can give some real value-add to the x86 architecture, then that might mean something. Service will be a part of that, as will hideously stable components, many of which I'm sure they'll design. So it could end up being a bit more than a rackmount PC. Although if it's being sold at a PC price-point, don't expect the world.

      Though you do seem surprised that Sun is trying to pull and IBM and switch from the hardware market to more software and services. Advances in low-end processing power have made high-end server margins go 'poof.'

    • It seems strange for Sun to hop on Xeon support right after the Opteron has been released. Not many days ago, rumor sites were full of "Sun will use Opterons" stories. I'm not saying they won't, but this seems a bit too convenient for Intel. Might this be a case where Intel runs in with fistfulls of cash to deny AMD a sweet PR opportunity? It seems dirty to think of Intel in bed with Sun, but Sun is in no position to be picky.

  • Alright... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coene ( 554338 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:12PM (#5999531)
    Sun's value has always been that they provide the hardware (Sparc Stuff) and the software (Solaris Stuff) to make one, metal-bending, kickass high-powered, proprietary solution...

    And now they are providing generic Intel hardware with generic Linux software to create the same solutions everyone else has...

    Does Sun really want to go up against Dell?
    • So IBM has expensive hardware but excellant consulting business. Dell has the low end commodity business. HP bought Compaq's server business, but why would you buy an HP server? I see all these commercials for HP servers but I think, "yeah, so what? why does that require a HP server?" What do you think is HP in a good long term position? Does anyone use only HP? If you do why?
      • They do because of the package. These companies (except Dell) don't just sell boxes, they lease everything: ERP, CRM... all those acronyms. You call them up, they come by with a briefcase full of brochures and a techie in tow and they write up a proposal for the boxes, the software, the integration, everything for only nine ninety nine ninety nine per month.

        Then you go to make your powerpoint presentation to the board and you have everything budgeted and guaranteed. Hero!

    • YES! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by teeker ( 623861 )
      Try this game:

      Go pick out any piece of Sun hardware and set it in the same rack as any comparable (??? well...you know what I mean...) piece of Dell kit. Fire them both up in their stock configs. First machine to suffer hardware failure loses.

      hint: don't put your money on the Dell.

      Sun's reputation for fantastic hardware will come in handy here. If they can sell in the same price league (and they can), they will be able to compete.
    • At the top of Dell's market? Sure, I would. Sell a cautious, maintainability-oriented data center a rack of 1U intels for edge-of-the-net stuff and a big database machine at the back, and fill the middle with middle-size machines. And give them their choice of Solaris and Linux.

      Compete against Dell with NT and Linux, and the reputation of NT in the data centre (;-))

      --dave (an sbus guy) c-b

  • New??? (Score:4, Informative)

    by antarctican ( 301636 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:13PM (#5999541) Homepage
    Man, where are you guys been? We received a Request For Proposal to build a cluster from them almost two months ago and it had V60xs as the cluster nodes. In fact, I just called the rep to order the system on Friday.

    Sweet boxes, I'm definately going to enjoy this new toy. And a lot sexier looking then IBM's proposal.
  • In other news, Scott McNealy was found deceased in his California home this morning after being bludgeoned with an Xserve. According to witnesses, there were two assailants, and one is known to have been wearing a Cashmere T-Shirt. This information was obtained from fiber samples obtained at the crime scene.

    When asked to comment on the matter, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer Inc. responded "Look who's beleaguered now!"

  • ahHAH! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:18PM (#5999565) Homepage
    A meeting betwixt SUN and RedHat:

    SunGuy: Before we begin with all that Java licensing crap, please come over here and sign this document.
    ShadowMan: What am I signing? If it's about our agreem-
    SunGuy: NOPE! Don't worry, you'll really love this. Oh, and give me an American one dollar bill, too, k?
    ShadowMan: K...*signs and forks over the $1* Now, WTF is going on here?
    SunGuy*BigEvilGrin*: We just gave you a sub-license to our UNIX intellectual property for the sum of one dollar.
    ShadowMan*BiggerEvilerGrin*: Really?!? Heh, "Fuck you verrry much, SCO"! Dude, that's just too much good work for one morning - LUNCH TIME!

    Soko
  • Yet another disappointment from Sun.

    They keep using inferior PC technology so there are at least some minor benefits from SPARC left over to point at.

    How disgusting.

    • > Uh, [Xeon]? What about Opteron?

      Ummm, maybe they actually wanted to sell their hardware to the business crowd. They're silly that way.

      I bet you could overclock it though and get away with only 2-3 industrial-sized exhaust fans. Check out the FPS on that, beeeyotch!

  • Sun's new move... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bsdparasite ( 569618 )
    Sun's new move is good enough for them to get into the x86 server space. I don't think anyone at the enterprise level is replacing all their SPARCs quite yet, even though the average x86 user thinks that's the way to go for servers. And when enterprise users think of a good vendor to do hardware business with, they might as well go with Sun. I also don't believe all the hype that predicts the death of every other form of Unix other than Linux. Solaris is a solid platform, and will continue to be until Linux

  • Price Comparasion (Score:5, Informative)

    by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:23PM (#5999599) Homepage Journal
    IBM's 1U Server [ibm.com]
    Sun's 1U Server [sun.com]

    At least they are price competitive with IBM. I'm not too sure about Dell but it's a start.
  • Dude, your gettin' s sun.

  • RedHat + Sun Java = w00t (Score:5, Funny)

    by Znonymous Coward ( 615009 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:27PM (#5999627) Journal
    RedHat will also start shipping Sun's Java with their distribution

    w00t. One less thing I have to do after install.

  • Isn't this the same Redhat that refused to ship KDE because QT was not free software ?. When did java become Free Software ?
    • I must have been hallucinating, then, when I had AT&T System V/386 boxes all over the place, Sun 386i's, and Altos's. Well, that was the 1980's, and I guess SCO can't remember back that far..

  • Sun cheaper than Dell? (Score:4, Informative)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:30PM (#5999646)
    for the first time, apple to apple comparison shows sun cheaper than dell. i selected sun v65 and tried identical system at dell. dell doesn't give 3.06 GHz in 2U rack, so i selected 2.8 GHz. This is 600 cheaper. However, Dell charges $600 for upgrade from 2.6 to 2.8, so their upgrade from 2.8 to 3.06 would have been higher than 600 (upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 is 200, 2.6 to 2.8 is 600). dell comes with customer installed RedHat Advanced Server while Sun comes with Solaris 9 and both are atleast comparable system (to be frank, RH profession is cheaper. but i am aware of several server apps which require RH AS patches and won't be certified on RH Pro).

  • Might help get x86 into Sun-only shops (Score:5, Interesting)

    by djh101010 ( 656795 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:37PM (#5999698) Homepage Journal
    I'm in a corporate environment where trying to get Linux or *BSD into the data center is an uphill battle. If the box comes from Sun, and runs Oracle, that makes that argument a whole lot easier for me. Even if it's more expensive than commodity hardware, they do have a deserved reputation for solid hardware, and I can use the logic that if Sun is willing to put their name on it, they're willing to back it up. I'm building a support system that's going to need it's own database; this box is worth looking into, for me.

  • Ahh, the final nail in the coffin called Sun. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LibertineR ( 591918 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:37PM (#5999699)
    I hope Sun notices the smoldering carcass of Silicon Graphics on the side of the road they are now traveling down. Happy to see that the death of this horribly managed beast is not too far off.

    "Hey, not enough people are buying our most profitable hardware! Lets give them MORE reasons to think about buying something else!!!" - Scott McNeely.

    Captain Ahab is not going to do down with the ship until he has managed to feed the White(Wintel) Whale his entire reason for being. Thank you, Scott. We hardly knew ya. I hope you Sun employees out there know how to tread water, and while you are at it, try to keep those resumes dry long enough to get them distributed.

    • Sun, like others, looks to be making the switch towards a more software and service oriented company, and less on the hardware. I've had no first hand experience, but from what I've heard, their support is second to none.

      So these things are competitively priced, and if they come with useful support by people who actually know what they're selling and building (unlike Dell who no doubt has those moronic interns answering the phone), then they could definately make a go of it.

      But the writing on the wall is

    • Re:Ahh, the final nail in the coffin called Sun. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm so bored with this same theme over and over again. Why don't you all stay in your own thread and keep your comments to yourselves.

      Sun selling x86 has nothing to do with competing with Dell and everything to do with selling big kit. It's about competing with HP and IBM who can offer more flexible solutions, i.e. small web/app servers talking to huge database servers. Big kit is Sun's core business now. This is what it has to protect.

      Likewise, as another writer writes, it's a way to keep Sun only sh

  • Wow.... Java (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Kurtv ( 558710 )
    Like it isnt easy enough to download it and unpack it on your own.....

  • They don't care that Sun Java is non-free? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by epukinsk ( 120536 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:02PM (#5999871) Homepage Journal
    Correct me if I am wrong, but Sun Java is non-free, right? They don't make source releases and their license certainly isn't OSI approved. I thought Red Hat was all about squeezing non-free software out of its distro? From their mission statement:
    "Red Hat believes that software infrastructure should be free. To that end, we are sharing our infrastructure technologies with the intention of establishing a common, open standard platform for software developers." [1]
    Is Java really a free, open software infrastructure?

    Erik

    [1] http://sources.redhat.com/mission.html

  • Sun x86 servers (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
  • These new product strategies they seem to be developing really dilute what little niche Sun could still claim. I'm not saying that the damage hasn't mostly come from the rest of the market -- Intel boxes with linux, FreeBSD, or Win2K server are more than up to the task these days in terms of reliability. It used to be (and still is by a few accounts) that if you wanted a commercial server that was even close to reliable, you had to shell out for what Sun offered.

    But Sun simply seems to be flailing about wi

  • Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jtharpla ( 531787 ) <jtharp.smalldark@net> on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:50PM (#6000263) Homepage
    Hardware RAID. Dell sells Intel boxes with it, HP sells Intel boxes with it. Why should I consider Sun without this? I know Dell's Hardware RAID isn't the best performance, but it's great for availability--actually I prefer's HP's (er, Compaq's) RAID controllers the best. What does Sun bring to the table to compete?

  • Sun 386i (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dprice ( 74762 ) <daprice.pobox@com> on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @03:16PM (#6000471) Homepage

    Back in 1988, I remember seeing x86 based Suns running SunOS. It wasn't called Solaris back then. SPARC RISC based workstations weren't available then. The bulk of the Sun workstations were Motorola 68xxx based. Sun came out with an 80386 workstation called the 386i.

    I had the opportunity to touch one when they first came out. A coworker was all excited that they were moving all their CAD software to the 386i, and he took me to their lab to show me the new machines. I wiggled the mouse, and it immediately crashed. That was the extent of my exposure.

    As far as I can tell, the Sun 386i flopped. Linux was not around yet. SPARC came along a couple years later, and Sun migrated totally to SPARC. Perhaps their first attempt at x86 was a good idea, but poorly executed.

  • JDK or JRE on Red Hat? (Score:3)

    by nedron ( 5294 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @03:19PM (#6000501) Homepage
    Hopefully, Red Hat will be shipping the JDK, not just the JRE. Generally, the only thing I have to do to a system after installation (aside from system updates) is installing Sun's JDK.

    It's too bad Red Hat didn't do this previously as it would have saved people a lot of trouble (particularly when they didn't realize they were using kaffe rather than Sun for java).

    -David

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:06PM (#6001700)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It's not about the low end. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fleabag ( 445654 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:26PM (#6002347)
    Sun does not really compete at the low end. A 280R at 17,000 GBP (discount yadda yadda) is not really competitive with a Xeon whatever, but that's not the point. It is binary/OS/Firmware compatible with the F15K/6.8K that I will deploy on, and that's why I will specifiy if for a dev box every time.

    Granted an x86 box will blow a 480/3800/280/240 into the weeds (probably) - but an x86 does not deliver the power of 72 CPUs on a 15K - or even 24 on a 6800. This is not about the back end - deploying a stateless web farm on x86 is cheap and good - but the back end DB/App server needs power (>24 CPU) and resilience (zero transaction loss fail over), and x86 does not offer the power at this stage.

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