APPLICATIONS
Sun Breaks New Ground for Streaming Applications with Sun Fire X4500
World's First Hybrid Data Server Combines Highest Throughput Rates with Ultra-High Storage Density -- Sun Microsystems today announced the Sun Fire X4500 server, the world's first hybrid data server combining a 4-way server powered by AMD Opteron processors, the highest storage density available in a server, and incredibly high data throughput. The Sun Fire X4500 server is designed to deliver storage density that is up to five times that of traditional server offerings, which will enable companies to host high-bandwidth applications and data on a single platform at approximately half the cost of alternative solutions. 
By integrating high storage density and throughput with a "Galaxy" Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) server, the Sun Fire X4500 data server is ideal for customers that use demanding, high-bandwidth applications, such as HPC, data warehousing/business intelligence, digital media streaming, digital surveillance and data analysis. The Sun Fire X4500 server reduces system complexity and allows datacenter managers to make more efficient use of available space. The new system offers up to 24 terabytes (TB) of storage in seven inches of rack space with sustained throughput of up to 2 gigabytes per second from disk to memory, and costs as low as $2 per gigabyte.
"When I was first shown the potential behind project Thumper, it blew my mind," said John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president of the Systems Group. "Integrating storage and server solutions creates an efficient way of deploying high-bandwidth applications. It shakes up conventional thinking, will delight our customers and puts our competition on notice that Sun is still the innovation leader."
Early access and beta customers such as Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), the University of Southern California (USC) and VeriSign have already tested the Sun Fire X4500 data server in their datacenters. In addition, a number of Sun partners and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have expressed their support for the new data server, including Agnostic Media, Front Porch, Greenplum, SAS and Symantec. ISV quotes and more details on ISV endorsements can be found at: its Web site.
Winning Combination of Sun Fire X4500 and the Solaris 10 OS
With the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) -- the most advanced OS on the planet -- the Sun Fire X4500 data server gives customers access to many unique and ground-breaking capabilities such as Solaris ZFS and Solaris Predictive Self-Healing for AMD Opteron-powered platforms. Solaris ZFS simplifies data management by eliminating the need for a time consuming and costly volume manager. Solaris ZFS supports massive file system sizes up to 16 billion times larger than existing 64-bit file systems, and automatically detects and corrects silent or accidental data corruption delivering an estimated 19 9's of data integrity. The latest in Solaris Predictive Self-Healing brings mainframe reliability features to AMD Opteron-powered platforms. With Solaris 10, the Sun Fire X4500 can automatically diagnose, isolate, and recover from many hardware and application faults with virtually no downtime.
The Sun Fire X4500 server also has the flexibility to run many commercial Linux distributions. More information on the Solaris 10 OS, Solaris Predictive Self-Healing and Solaris ZFS can be found at: its Web site.
Additional information on the Sun Fire X4500 data server, including pricing, availability and promotions, can be found at: its Web site.
By integrating high storage density and throughput with a "Galaxy" Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) server, the Sun Fire X4500 data server is ideal for customers that use demanding, high-bandwidth applications, such as HPC, data warehousing/business intelligence, digital media streaming, digital surveillance and data analysis. The Sun Fire X4500 server reduces system complexity and allows datacenter managers to make more efficient use of available space. The new system offers up to 24 terabytes (TB) of storage in seven inches of rack space with sustained throughput of up to 2 gigabytes per second from disk to memory, and costs as low as $2 per gigabyte.
"When I was first shown the potential behind project Thumper, it blew my mind," said John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president of the Systems Group. "Integrating storage and server solutions creates an efficient way of deploying high-bandwidth applications. It shakes up conventional thinking, will delight our customers and puts our competition on notice that Sun is still the innovation leader."
Early access and beta customers such as Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), the University of Southern California (USC) and VeriSign have already tested the Sun Fire X4500 data server in their datacenters. In addition, a number of Sun partners and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have expressed their support for the new data server, including Agnostic Media, Front Porch, Greenplum, SAS and Symantec. ISV quotes and more details on ISV endorsements can be found at: its Web site.
