Sun has a range of enterprise servers. This section discusses the following enterprise servers:
Sun Enterprise 4x00, 5x00, and 6x00 servers
SPARCcenter 2000/2000E servers
SPARCserver 1000/1000E servers
The Sun Enterprise 6000 server system, the Sun Enterprise 5000 server system and the Sun Enterprise 4000 server system are available in two enclosures (see Figure 2-2):
Enterprise 6000 or 5000 is a 56-inch cabinet containing either a 16-slot or 8-slot card cage.
Enterprise 4000 is a stand-alone enclosure containing an 8-slot card cage.
The same CPU/memory board, I/O boards, disk board, processor modules, memory SIMMs, power modules, and cooling modules are used in all enclosures.
The minimum configuration for the Sun Enterprise 4000, 5000, and 6000 is:
16-slot or 8-slot card cage
Modular power supply
Fan tray (cabinet servers) or fan box (standalone server)
Clock board
CPU/memory board
I/O board
Peripheral power supply
AC distribution unit
SCSI receptacle for removable media, including CD-ROM
Sun Enterprise systems have extensive error detection mechanisms, and an Automatic System Reconfiguration (ASR) feature that enables the system to be rebooted with failed components (such as CPUs, memory, or I/O) disabled. When an error is detected, the system is reconfigured so that the board containing the failed components is placed in low power mode and is no longer accessible.
The hot-plugable feature inserts a new board into a powered up system, despite being "live," or being supplied with electrical power. Once a working board is added to a powered on system with the hot-plugable feature, the Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6 software environments will not use the new board until the system is rebooted. The systems also support hot-plugable disk drives and redundant, hot-plugable power and cooling units.
High speed networking is supported by integrated 10 or 100 Mb Ethernet and optional ATM interface.
The systems support remote control administration, which enables remote rebooting and power cycling.
The system monitor for these servers is Solstice(TM) SyMON(TM), a system performance tool that you can use to:
Monitor the performance of a large server with multiple processors, I/O, and disks.
Optimize the configuration and throughput of the server.
Identify hardware and software failures quickly. Failures range from major failures (CPU crash), to minor failures (slow cooling fan). Solstice SyMON identifies the component or software and its location.
Monitor hardware performance to detect incipient hardware failure (soft read errors on a disk).
The 3500-6500 mid range server line uses the 336 MHz UltraSPARC(TM) processor and the 84MHz to 100 MHz interconnect called the Sun Gigaplane(TM) system bus. This server family includes hot-pluggable disk drives, processors, power supplies and cooling. Dynamic Reconfiguration and Alternate Pathing software, which lets you add, remove, or replace system resources while maintaining application availability, is a new feature of these servers. The server family also has CPU power control, a new feature.
The Sun(TM) Enterprise(TM)3500 server, designed to be an entry-level departmental server, is contained in a tower/deskside enclosure. It has five system slots that can be used for either CPU/memory boards or I/O boards and contains up to eight CPUs. It has up to 8 Gbytes of memory, 72.8 GBytes of internal disk storage, and can provide greater than 2 Terabytes of maximum total disk storage. The system also includes one CD-ROM drive and an optional tape drive. It includes disk bays for eight dual-ported FC-AL disk drives.
The Sun Enterprise 4500 server is housed in a tabletop enclosure and has eight system slots providing capacity for up to 14 CPUs. It is designed to be a high end departmental server and has up to 14 Gbytes of memory. The server provides 33.6 Gbytes of interal storage and can provide up to 4 Terabytes of maximum total disk storage. The server also contains one tape drive.
The Sun Enterprise 5500 server, designed to be an entry-level datacenter server, also has eight system slots providing up to 14 CPUs but the enclosure is a 68-inch cabinet. It contains up to 14 Gbytes of memory. It provides up to 509 Gbytes of internal storage and has the capability to provide greater than 6 Terabytes of maximum total disk storage. The server also contains a tape library.
The Sun Enterprise 6500 server, a high-end datacenter server, also is housed in a 68-inch cabinet. It has 16 system slots and can contain up to 30 CPUs and 30 Gbytes of memory. The server provides 382 Gbytes of internal storage and can provide greater than 10 Terabytes of maximum total disk storage. The server also contains a tape library. The system rack provides support for multiple internal disk subsystems and tape options.
The SPARCcenter 2000 and the SPARCcenter 2000E systems, which were introduced in 1992, provide the computing solution for a company. As such, the SPARCcenter 2000 system and the SPARCcenter 2000E system are multifunctional network NFS file servers. They support less than 500 NFS clients and have the flexibility required for dedicated or multifunctional application environments.
The SPARCcenter 2000 system and the SPARCcenter 2000E system provide scalability and extensive expansion in these areas:
CPU processor power
Memory capability
I/O connectivity
They meet the following requirements:
High capacity I/O requirements of corporate data centers
Computationally intensive demands of other organizations
The heart of the SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system is a high-speed packet-switched bus complex that provides very high data transfer bandwidth. The backplane supports two distinct XDBuses operating in parallel.
The SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system use up to twenty SuperSPARCTM modules in a shared-memory symmetric multiprocessing configuration, meeting most performance needs. You can expand or upgrade the processing capability by adding SuperSPARC modules.
Main memory is configured in multiple logical units that are installed in the bus complex.
The I/O is expandable. For example, you can configure up to 40 SBus slots on 10 independent buses. The large I/O capacity and configurability makes the SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system suitable for very large applications.
The system monitor for this server is Solstice SyMON.
The SPARCserver 1000 and the SPARCserver 1000E systems have the following features:
Up to four system boards can be installed
Up to eight SuperSPARC processors (two per system board) can be installed
Up to 2 Gbytes of main memory (using 32 Mbyte SIMMs) can be installed
Up to 16.8 Gbytes of internal storage
50 MHz system clock speed in the SPARCserver 1000E system (40 MHz in the SPARCserver 1000 system)
25 MHz SBus speed in the SPARCserver 1000E system (20 MHz in the SPARCserver 1000 system)
When connected to 12 SPARCstorage Array subsystems, the SPARCserver 1000 or 1000E systems provide up to 756 Gbytes of external storage
Up to 12 SBus slots
Onboard SCSI-2 port and twisted pair Ethernet on each system board
Internal 5 Gbyte 4mm tape drive (or 10 Gbyte 8mm tape drive)
Internal CD-ROM drive
NVRAM-NVSIMM Prestoserve NFS accelerator (optional)