SPARC Data Center Servers

Note - this archive product record (below) is from the 1993 edition of the SPARC Product Directory

Includes:-

servers in a large data systems cabinet preferably located in a computer room environment

See also:-

article:- Sun and the SPARC OEMs - State of the Market Report (2005)
article:- Sun, SPARC and Solaris Highlights and Lowlights in 2004
article:- Surviving the Solaris x86 Wars
article:- the Benefits of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) for External Subsystems
Squeak! - the Fastest Growing Storage Companies
article:- Why Sun Should Acquire a Solid State Disk Company
article:- Hardware Upgrades to Make Your Sun SPARC Server Go Faster

manufacturer

model

description

SBus
slots

Sun Microsystems

SPARC center 2000

2 to 20 CPU multi-processor superSPARC based server in 10 slot XDS bus system, 56" high cabinet. The SPARCcenter 2000 can be configured with 1 to 10 system boards. System boards have the following features:- 1 or 2 SPARC processors with 1M cache, 64M RAM expandable to 128M/512M (using 8M/32M SIMMS), dual 64 bit XDS system bus with up to 640 M bytes/sec I/O bandwidth, 4 SBus slots, SCSI, ethernet, 2 x RS-232.

The system cabinet (56" H, 30" W, 39" D) supports the following mass storage configurations:- 18 x 5.25" 2.1G winchesters (37G total), 644M CD-ROM drive, 150M 0.25" tape drive, 5G 8mm tape drive (max 3 per cabinet). An external expansion cabinet can add 48 x 2.1G winchesters, or 4 x 8mm tape drives and 36 x 2.1G winchesters enabling total disk expansion to 138G bytes.

Automatic System Recovery enables the system to reconfigure out faulty modules. Online DiskSuite package enables software mirroring of disks. Software:- Solaris 2.1 or later .

Status:- superceded by Ultra Enterprise 6,000.

4 to 40

Sun Microsystems

Super- server 6400

Originally developed and marketed by Cray Research, this product line and SPARC business unit was purchased from the new owner Silicon Graphics in 1996. The Superserver 6400 offers 4 to 64 superSPARC processors connected via a packet switched backbone consisting of 4 XDS busses, with a peak throughput of 1.3G bytes/sec. (Twice the bus bandwidth of the SPARCcenter 2000.) Total system RAM up to 16G bytes. Disk storage:- over 2 Tera bytes. There are 2 types of processor module:-

Service processor:- performs diagnostics. logging and monitoring. One per system.

System module:- each has 4 x SPARC CPU's, 4 x XDS interfaces, and an SBus controller with 4 SBus slots. RAM from 256M to 1G bytes. The RAM and SBus controller are addressable via the XDS bus from any processor. I/O interfaces are implemented via SBus. Up to 16 system modules per system.

The system supports disk striping for performance, and disk mirroring for resiliance - as standard features. Processor cards and disk modules can be hot swapped. Disks are connected via 16 bit SCSI-2 (fast wide) cabling. Software:- Solaris 2.4 with Superserver extensions. Includes "domain" features which enable multiple operating systems to be run on the same server. This enables systems administrators to test out and install new software without affecting existing applications if things go wrong.

Status superceded by the Ultra Enterprise 10,000.

upto 63

SPARC(R) is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. SPARC PRODUCT DIRECTORY(SM) is a service mark of SPARC International, Inc used under license by ACSL. Products using the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.