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Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday released the latest Netra product for the telecommunications industry, the Netra CP2300 blade server.
The blade server, which was unveiled at the CTIA Wireless 2003 show in New Orleans, is NEBS (Network Equipment Building Standard) Level 3 compliant, a key standard for telecom servers that often are housed in harsher environments than what are found in enterprise data centers, according to Kirk Mosher, group manager for Suns Netra systems products.
It also adheres to requirements set forth by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, a standards body that makes recommendations regarding how telecom and industrial technology equipment should be built, and the CompactPCI Packet Switch Backplane standards, Mosher said.
The CP2300 is part of an aggressive push over the past few months by Sun to expand its Netra line of products. In November, Sun rolled out two new blades and an upgraded Netra HA (High Availability) software suite. Earlier this month, the Santa Clara, Calif., company announced the Netra 1280, a 12-way telecom server featuring 900MHz UltraSPARC III chips.
A key enhancement in the CP2300 is the servers ability to use both Ethernet and cPCI networking technology, Mosher said. Rather than having that capability integrated into the server, it is connected into the 12U (21-inch) chassis that holds the blades via a CompactPCI Packet Switch backplane technology.
The CP2300 telecom blade is powered by a 650MHz UltraSPARC IIi chip with up to 2.5GB of memory. It also supports Solaris and Suns Netra HA software. There also are several I/O interfaces, from a serial port to the front panel to dual Ethernet, dual serial and one USB port to the rear panel.
The off-the-shelf nature of the blade, which will be available in May starting at $1,995, enables network equipment providers to move away from more costly legacy systems, Sun officials said.
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