100+ Sun VAR Links Zapped
Today
Editor:- October 27, 2005 - I deleted links to over 100
VARs from our US
Sun VAR page today as part of improving the quality of information we
supply to our readers.
Although all of the zapped companies did at one
time supply SPARC servers (or compatibles) and some may still do so now, the
companies gave the strong appearance that they were dormant and it has been
many years since they either updated their web sites or contacted us. There may
be more that we need to remove too...
On the other side of the
revolving door - new VARs come into the Sun market every month - despite the
fact that it has been a graveyard for many companies.
The market has
matured - and Sun VARs today need to supply products and services that fill the
gaps between what users want and what Sun can supply directly. Sometimes that
difference is a lower price, or faster response - but usually there's a lot more
too it than that. Sun VARs in the USA
Sun Innovator Notches Up 100th Patent
SANTA
CLARA, Calif. - October 26, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today
announced that Marc Tremblay, a Sun fellow, vice president and Chief
Architect has been awarded his 100th technology patent since joining Sun more
than 14 years ago.
The most patented Sun employee, his earlier
contributions in the area of innovative processor technology have helped
establish Sun as a leader in network computing. Tremblay's latest patents for
multi-core processor technology has furthered the "throughput computing"
model that is challenging the boundaries of Moore's Law and which will power new
Sun servers that offer staggering utilization figures.
The patents
expand a growing portfolio in chip-level multiprocessing, chip-level
multithreading and speculative multithreading technologies that form the
cornerstone of Sun's UltraSPARC processor portfolio and Sun's Throughput
Computing strategy. ...Sun Microsystems
profile
See also:-
article:- Looking
Back at 3rd Party SPARC Technology Firsts
SPARC Product Directory Publisher Celebrates 14th Anniversary
Editor:-
October 19, 2005 - this month is the 14th anniversary of founding ACSL - publisher
of the SPARC Product Directory
and STORAGEsearch.com
In
the early days the Sun market was our entire focus and there was no world wide
web. Our directories, which included shortform product data on every host bus
adapter and every SPARC workstation and server made by over 150 manufacturers,
were paper publications which weighed over two pounds. It's hard to imagine in
the internet world we now live in, the difficulties of researching a market in
which the main forms of communication were the phone, fax and letter. When we
switched to a web format in 1996 we were glad to get rid of all that paper.
Although
the $75 billion / year storage market is our main source of revenue and readers,
we still remain committed to the changing needs of SPARC users.
There
seems to be renewed interest and confidence in the SPARC market - measured by
37% year on year increase in SPARC readers in September. The main reasons for
this I think are:-
- Sun's acquisition of StorageTek, which was the most popular news story of
the year on STORAGEsearch.com, has removed any doubt that Sun has a long term
future as an independent company. Sun's opportunities in the storage market are
so huge that it's a lifeboat or insurance policy. Sun's server users don't have
to worry so much if they don't always understand or agree with what Sun is doing
day to day in its server business. That confidence means that Sun has more
freedom to take risks which it thinks will have a long term payoff.
- Sun's multicore SPARC processors have increased its competitiveness
compared to its rivals in the proprietary server market. And Sun's alliance with
Fujitsu gives users some hope that its SPARC chips will get faster and not just
better at juggling dataflows.
Although the SPARC market will never
regain the revenue dominance it achieved in the dotcom boom years, it looks like
it will stay a firm part of the server landscape as the SPARC market enters its
3rd decade in 2006. And as long as our readers value the oldest surviving
independent publication in the SPARC market, we'll be there covering it.
...ACSL profile,
SPARC History
Sun's New Flagship SPARC Servers
SANTA
CLARA, CALIF.- October 17, 2005 - Sun Microsystems today announced the
immediate availability of its new high end servers, the Sun Fire E20K and E25K
server.
- Sun
Fire E20K - upto 36 x 1.35GHz dual core UltraSPARC IV+ processors and 288GB
memory. Upto 9 Uniboards - the same ones used on Sun Fire E4900-E25K servers.
- Sun
Fire E25K - upto 72 x 1.35GHz dual core UltraSPARC IV+ processors and 576GB
memory.
The new UltraSPARC IV+-processor based uniboards can be "hot
swapped" into existing Sun Fire servers so that customers don't have to
replace entire systems in order to experience performance gains. Sun says the
UltraSPARC IV+ servers deliver nearly double the performance of UltraSPARC IV
servers at the same price Pricing starts at around $500,000 for the Sun Fire
E20K and $1,000,000 for the E25K. ...Sun Microsystems
profile, Sun's
SPARC Servers Overview
Editor's comments:- 4 years ago, Sun's
flagship SPARC processors were 900MHz single core units. So in that yawning
length of time users have seen the headline SPARC processor clock rate
increase by only a pitiful 50%. That's one of the reasons that Intel
Architecture processors running Windows and Linux have overtaken Sun's once
commanding lead in server revenue and shipments.
On the plus side
for SPARC... tweaks to Solaris and integrating two processors inside the SPARC
IV chips means that Sun is delivering more throughput performance and is more
competitive than in the past - but my prediction is - it will get harder for
Sun to extract more peak performance from its processors over the next 4 years
too.
Does that mean the race for SPARC performance leadership is
lost?
No. The good news - is that other processor architectures too
will see a flattening in their headline GigaHertz clock rates - for similar
technical reasons. (Signal skew on wide data busses means that there is too much
timing uncertainty as the signals leave the chips and hit the motherboard.
Therefore the advantage of being able to run faster inside the chip is mostly
lost - by the time the data has settled on the PCB.) What users will see
instead, is server makers offering more cores and much faster storage - as the
primary ways to deliver faster architectures. If you want faster SPARC
processors now -
Fujitsu has been
shipping 1.9GHz SPARC servers for over a year. But because they are useless at
marketing, most Sun users will prefer to wait until Sun oems Fujitsu's server
range.
Curtiss-Wright Debuts Conduction-Cooled 8-Port GigE Switch PMC
San
Diego CA - October 11, 2005 - Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
has introduced the PGR8, a new unmanaged, 8-port Gigabit Ethernet (GigE)
Switch PMC card.
This conduction-cooled, fully ruggedized
mezzanine module enables system designers to quickly and easily add high
reliability GigE switched networks to their most demanding VMEbus and
CompactPCI-based embedded applications.
"Defense and aerospace
platforms deployed in harsh environments increasingly need dependable high
bandwidth data communications," said Lynn Patterson, vice president and
general manager of Modular Solutions, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded
Computing. "The conduction cooled, ruggedized PGR8 allows gigabit switched
networks to be built into existing embedded systems."
Designed in full compliance with the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, the
PGR8 provides integrated 8-port Layer-2 switching and delivers full wire-speed
performance over each of its ports. Integration of a PGR8 onto a host board is
fast and simple; the card's PMC connectors provide the required power and ground
rails. No PCI bus signaling or additional software support is needed.
...Curtiss-Wright
Controls profile,
military SPARC
systems, add-in
cards for Sun
Dot Hill to Provide More Storage to the Dot in Dot Com
CARLSBAD,
Calif. - October 5, 2005 - Dot Hill Systems Corp.announced today that
it has expanded and extended its multi-year product purchase and development
agreement with Sun through January 2011.
Under the terms
of the agreement, Sun will continue to develop storage solutions for the Sun
StorEdge family of entry/volume storage products, while utilizing key elements
from Dot Hill including the newly acquired storage and management controller
technologies from Chaparral Network Storage.
"Our continued development of new volume storage solutions
targeted at the next-generation Sun server AMD Opteron and SPARC families, will
further expand our leadership position in providing customers with an open,
scalable and highly efficient storage/compute platform for their data centers,"
said James Whitemore, vice president of marketing, Data Management Group, Sun
Microsystems. "The Sun StorEdge 3000 series, built on technology
collaboration with Dot Hill, continues to be one of our most successful storage
product lines, because it provides enterprise quality and functionality to
customers for task and business critical applications while providing pay as you
grow affordability in price sensitive departmental and workgroup environments.
This strong partnership continues to grow as both companies are committed to the
delivery of compelling advanced storage solutions designed to meet the needs of
existing and future customers."
...Dot Hill profile
Sun and Google Collaborate on Software Distribution
MOUNTAIN
VIEW, Calif. - October 4, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Google
Inc. today announced an agreement to promote and distribute their software
technologies to millions of users around the world. |
Under the agreement, Sun will
include the Google Toolbar as an option in its consumer downloads of the Java
Runtime Environment.
In addition, the companies have agreed to explore
opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies, like the Java Runtime
Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite.
Editor's
comments:- Google accounts for 46% of web searches according to
Search
Engine Watch. Although Google is a smaller threat to Microsoft today than
Netscape was in the mid 1990s (when it had nearly 100% of the web browser
market) Google remains the only viable launchpad for serious competition on the
desktop. So this agreement opens a potentially huge channel for Sun. But don't
hold your breath. I doubt if this agreement will lead to more than a ripple in
the desktop market.
More to life than desktops and servers.
One
of the upcoming war scapes in computer architecture will be the battle for
storage search-engines (see sidebar article) - which help regulatory compliance
on networks within the enterprise. Having Google search technology in embedded
heterogeneous products using Sun technology would be compatible with Sun's
future destiny as one of the world's
biggest storage
companies.
The $75 billion storage market is already considerably
bigger than the server
market and is not yet dominated by any single company. That could change.
Microsoft
announced
last week its plans to make its own OS the lowest cost platform for storage.
Google
and Sun aren't natural allies. When it became clear in 2000 that the world's
largest internet delivery company used Linux and Intel servers to power its
business - that was a strong counter argument to the concept that users had to
use the "dot in dotcom" to power their ecommerce ambitions. But as
Churchill said when commenting on his unlikely partnership with Stalin in World
War 2. "As much as he detested the Soviet regime - if Hitler were to
invade Hell he would promptly
sign a
pact with the Devil." |
Nibble:-
Will Storage Search Appliances Create a Real New Market?
Ever
since the widespread use of search-engines on the world wide web in 1996 it's
been a bone of contention for marketers and knowledge workers that finding
critical data within their own corporate networks is harder than finding useful
data on the web.
Although some search technology companies like
Google and
Thunderstone offer search appliances
for use in company intranets - they don't solve two basic basic problems.
- Not all enterprise data is available in file formats
which are understood by search-engines which were originally designed for a web
world.
- Not all enterprise data is amenable to access by
crawlers. For example data in directly attached storage or connected to
fibre-channel SANs. Also the performance overhead and security risks inherent
in allowing search agents access to all the servers on your network may be
unacceptable.
The importance of unstructured
data in emails, word documents, powerpoint presentations etc is well understood.
In the last few years backup
software vendors have brought out special products to make sure that these
files are archived and retrievable to meet
security regulations.
But that's not the same as making this data easy to randomly access for the
purposes of business intelligence or creating a new strategic plan.
That's
why two announcements in mid March by
Index Engines and
Kazeon Systems are
interesting - because they suggest that a new generation of storage start up
companies has been quitely working on this problem and is starting to offer
products.
The approach from Index Engines, is to install an indexing
appliance in the path of the network backup system. This avoids the problem of
network topologies - because wherever the data came from - it should end up
passing through the backup tape or disk system - at the time that a backup is
done. This solution indexes the data in real-time - with minimal impact on the
backup time - but has the disadvantage of scalability. It will be too slow for
many users. But it's a real product and is a good start in this market. My view
is this company needs to start making deals with
tape backup companies
pronto - so that they can bundle the new products as a value-added option.
Otherwise sales will be slow as few users will be willing to take the risk
that the appliance from an unknown new company might somehow affect their
backup.
The approach from Kazeon Systems is more cryptic - because
they don't have a marketable product yet - although the company does say that it
is being tried in real customer sites. This sounds like a more scalable solution
- because the company's initial press release said it could deal with "billions
of objects and the information they contain." We'll have to wait
till the summer to see more details.
But we can expect to see a lot
more companies in this market space marry storage search technology to data
archiving. When that happens we'll create a special index page for it. Until
then just watch this space.
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Dataram Launches 128GB
Memory Upgrade For Sun Fire V890 Servers
Princeton, NJ
- October 3, 2005 - Dataram today announced a powerful new Maximizer XXL
memory upgrade for Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V890 server.
The
DRS880/128GB enables customers to double the memory capacity of the V890 from 64
to 128GB a powerful option designed to fully utilize the technological advances
of the new UltraSPARC IV+ processors.
The DRS880/128GB is an attractively priced bundle of sixty-four 2GB
DIMMs designed to fully populate all slots of the Sun Fire V890. For just an
additional $12,000 (see offer below), customers can double the memory capacity
of Suns 64GB V890 "Extra Large" model.
The UltraSPARC IV+ processor uses Chip Multithreaded Technology that
supports two simultaneous threads as a result of two independent cores. Each
processor runs at 1.5 GHz speed with 2MB of L2 cache and 32MB L3 cache. With 8
processors and 16 cores, coupled with 128GB of system memory, a very powerful
V890 is ready to take on the most demanding memory intensive applications. The
Sun Fire V490 is also an excellent candidate for Dataram's high-density 2GB
DIMMs and features up to 4 UltraSPARC IV+ processors, 8 cores and 64GB of
Dataram memory. In addition, the Sun Fire E2900-E6900 may be powered with
Datarams advanced 2GB high capacity memory modules.
The promotional price of the Maximizer XXL DRS880/128GB is $56,000
which includes the trade-in of sixty-four 512MB Sun factory-installed DIMMs (an
$8,000 value) from a Sun V890 "Large" model. The combination of
Dataram's 128GB upgrade ($56,000) and Sun's V890 "Large" model
($118,995 List Price) provides a total customer cost of $174,995 versus the 64GB
Sun V890 "Extra Large" model with a List Price of $162,995 a
difference of $12,000 for twice the memory capacity.
...Dataram
profile |
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100+ Sun VAR
Links Zapped Today
Sun Innovator Notches Up 100th Patent
SPARC
Product Directory Publisher is 14
Sun's New Flagship SPARC Servers
Curtiss-Wright
Debuts Conduction-Cooled GigE Switch PMC
Dot Hill to Provide More
Storage to Sun
Sun and Google Collaborate on Software Distribution
Dataram
Launches 128GB RAM Upgrade For Sun Fire V890
earlier news -
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Epoka Group,
with sales offices in
Germany, Denmark and Russia is a leading
European
reseller of Sun and Fujitsu SPARC
servers. |
 Sun
VARs Germany | |
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Serial Attached SCSI - Delivering Flexibility to the
Data Center - article by LSI Logic and Maxtor
If you think
you already know SAS because you know SATA and traditional SCSI then think
again. Sometimes disruptive technologies wear an unassuming disguise. In
fiction, Clark Kent, Frodo Baggins and Buffy Summers at first seem harmless, but
we see them change into Superman, the Ring Bearer and the Slayer.
SAS
too comes cloaked in plain garb - with a physical layer which looks a lot like
SATA. But like the Incredible Hulk there are muscles rippling under that shirt -
and you would be wrong to dismiss SAS so lightly. There's a lot more inside this
interface than it says on the box as this informative article reveals. ...read the article,
...LSI Logic profile,
...Maxtor profile,
Serial Attached SCSI | |
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the
Benefits of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) for External Subsystems - article by
Adaptec
This introduction to Serial Attached SCSI gives you
an idea of the performance, compatibilities, applications and roadmap for this
new directly attached disk connection standard. With throughput capability
faster than 2Gbps Fibre-channel systems and faster than ultra320 SCSI - the new
SAS products not only provide an upward migration path for parallel SCSI
applications but also open the door to a new class of high performance high
reliability enterprise systems.
...read the article,
...Adaptec profile,
Serial Attached SCSI | |
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Serial Attached SCSI - Delivering Flexibility to the
Data Center - article by LSI Logic and Maxtor
"SAS gains a
performance advantage through its support of multiple initiators, or the ability
to support I/O requests from more than one controller at a time. With dual ports
and multiple initiator support, SAS RAID arrays can implement dynamic load
balancing, allowing I/O requests to be evenly spread across multiple
controllers, leveraging the full processing power of all of them. Without this
capability, the I/O requests can become skewed, and overload one controller,
while the others may not be at full capacity. SATA technology does not
support this capability."
...read the article,
...LSI Logic profile,
...Maxtor profile,
Serial Attached SCSI | |
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War of the
Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash Solid State Disks - Despatches from the
Magneto / Flash Wars - article by BiTMICRO
BiTMICRO is the
#1 best recognised brand of SSDs (source
STORAGEsearch.com SSD
Survey) and they have published a lot of
articles to help
customers understand the benefits of their products. When I first saw the
submission for this article I was pleased to see that it quoted extracts from
and linked to several other articles that I myself had written or edited - so
that gave me a warm glow.
After years of analyzing this market SSD
vendors and analysts are starting to see some clear patterns emerging. Although
opinions still differ on some subjects, and vendors are prone to pitch their own
solutions as best, this article is a useful synthesis of current industry
thinking by one of the leading flash SSD module manufacturers. ...read the article,
...BiTMICRO Networks
profile, Solid State Disks,
Hard disk drives | |
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