Sun Expands Open Network Systems Architecture

Sun Boosts CMT Servers with 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus Processors and Logical Domains Enhancements Leveraging the Solaris Operating System; New Six-Core AMD Opteron-Processor Based Blades and Rackmount Servers Increase Performance by up to 30 Percent.

Enhancing its Open Network Systems architecture, which converges compute, networking, software and storage, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced new 1.6 GHz processors for its chip multi-threaded (CMT) Sun SPARC Enterprise systems running the Solaris Operating System (OS); new Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) virtualization software, leveraging the latest release of the Solaris OS; and, new Open Network Systems-based solutions aimed to help increase application performance and return on investment. Sun also rolled out new AMD Opteron processor-based blades and rackmount x64 servers. To take advantage of special offers and promotions for Sun's new servers, visit http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy.

"Sun's Solaris-based CMT servers blazed a trail with massive multi-threading, and virtualization and crypto at no extra cost," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun's Open Network Systems provide an ideal combination of performance, efficiency and cost savings for the most critical applications in the enterprise."

Sun's Open Network Systems Architecture Delivers Speed, Simplicity and Savings Across the Data Center

Sun's Open Network Systems architecture converges open computing, networking, software and storage technologies to help increase performance with massive efficiency and scalability that maximizes the economics of computing for enterprise business applications including BIDW, ERP and CRM. New products and solutions announced today include:

Sun 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus-based CMT systems and Sun LDoms 1.2 Software - Sun CMT servers and the Solaris OS deliver increased performance, scalability and reliability with built-in virtualization capabilities and on-chip cryptographic acceleration, at no additional cost. Combining new 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus processors with new Sun LDoms 1.2 software provides additional virtualization and compute performance, simplifying management, reducing I/O bottlenecks and accelerating application response time.

The latest release of Sun LDoms 1.2 software, combined with the latest Solaris OS release, delivers new features including:

• Built-in Configuration Tools - Provides simple and streamlined setup of Logical Domains with built-in command line configuration tools that enable customers to quickly begin using LDoms.
• CPU Power Management - Reduces system footprint through unique CPU power management, automatically powering off cores not in use.
• Jumbo Frames - Enhances network performance and efficiencies across network infrastructures with the support of jumbo frames, allowing customers to send more data at one time, reducing processing load requirements.
• Domain Mobility - Enables the dynamic migration of domains to accommodate increased resource demands, maintenance requirements, or to reduce energy consumption during low utilization periods via a single migration command.
• Built-in Recovery - Automatically backs up LDom configurations on disk in case of system corruption.
• Physical-to-Virtual Migration Tool - Allows customers to adopt LDom infrastructures quickly when moving from existing legacy SPARC/Solaris systems to Sun CMT systems.

Customers can further boost the performance of their CMT blades with Sun's open networking technologies like the Sun Blade 6000 Virtual Network Express Module (NEM), a high performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) rapid network virtualization provisioning network module delivers outstanding cost per port and takes complexity out of the network infrastructure by eliminating a full switching layer. More information on Sun networking solutions is available at http://www.sun.com/networking.

Availability and Pricing

Sun's enhanced CMT systems with 1.6 GHz processors start at $23,925 for blade server modules and $33,339 for rack servers. Sun's new x64 products start at $2,794 U.S. list price. All prices quoted are in U.S. dollars. More detail is available at http://www.sun.com/cmt and http://www.sun.com/x64. Sun is also offering a number of promotions on the systems announced today. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/tradeins.