eWEEK Labs tests of one of Sun Microsystems Inc.s first “Niagara”-based servers show that the platform pushes the limits of server processing power.
Click here to read the full review of the Sun Fire T2000.
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eWEEK Labs tests of one of Sun Microsystems Inc.s first “Niagara”-based servers show that the platform pushes the limits of server processing power.
Armed with Suns latest SPARC processor, the Sun Fire T2000 server provides exceptional performance while lowering power consumption and improving server density. Our tests show the midrange server, equipped with the new eight-core UltraSPARC T1 processor, is capable of providing excellent threaded performance for Web and application server workloads.
The 2U (3.5-inch) Sun Fire T2000, which started shipping in December, starts at $7,795 with 8GB of memory and two 73GB hard drives. The CPU is available in 1GHz and 1.2GHz versions, with four, six or eight cores.
While hardware with as much processing power as the Sun Fire T2000 would normally have a large footprint, this server packs higher processing power and plenty of networking and storage options in a relatively small chassis. This is possible because the Sun Fire T2000 is the first server to be outfitted with the UltraSPARC T1 processor—something that really makes the server, and Sun, stand out from the competition.
Sun was able to get as many as eight cores—each capable of processing four concurrent instruction threads for a total of 32 simultaneous threads—onto the chip, which was formerly code-named Niagara. This is important because competitors such as Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are not expected to release eight-core processors until 2008. Both chip manufacturers recently announced plans to move to quad-core processors in 2007.
The architecture of the UltraSPARC T1 is also unique in that it is designed to offer greater performance than current single- or dual-core processors while keeping energy consumption and heat generation low—a capability Sun refers to as its CoolThreads multithreading technology. With CoolThreads technology, the UltraSPARC T1 has a power envelope of about 70 watts, meaning it consumes less power than a standard light bulb. A comparable Intel Xeon CPU runs at more than 100 watts.
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As enterprises become increasingly concerned about power consumption and cooling costs, Suns bet on more cost-effective systems that use less power by doing simpler tasks is a move that IT managers will appreciate. The coupling of low power consumption with multicore chips will enable organizations to reduce their server footprint in the data center while saving on energy costs.
The Sun Fire T2000 is equipped with four 10/100/ 1,000MB Ethernet ports and will support as many as four 73GB SAS (serial-attached SCSI) drives. The server also is armed with four USB ports, three PCI Express slots and two PCI-X slots for peripherals. The T2000 is cooled by three hot-swappable, redundant fans; it is powered by dual hot-swappable, redundant power supplies.
While the Sun Fire T2000 does not support hardware RAID, we expect organizations that spend the money to outfit the server will likely attach the unit to a SAN (storage area network).
eWEEK Labs $26,995 test unit was equipped with one eight-core 1.2GHz UltraSPARC T1 processor, 32GB of DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory and dual 73GB 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives. The Sun Fire T2000 system we tested was running Suns Solaris 10 and Java Enterprise System software.
Also included was a Sun ALOM (Advanced Lights Out Management) card for remote management. The ALOM card is used to monitor events such as CPU temperature, fan speed, thermal conditions and disk-drive status.
During tests, the Sun Fire T2000 was best at handling front-end Web and application serving workloads that could take advantage of the servers multithreading capabilities.
Taking on Solaris shine
The Sun Fire T2000s tight integration with the Solaris 10 operating system allowed us to take advantage of facilities built into the software, including the ability to use Suns process resource control to limit which cores ran a thread.
For example, we were able to disable specific cores while the system was up and running, as well as associate particular threads with one or more specific cores. We were also able to use Solaris 10 to bind loads to specific cores. And by using the operating systems resource pools and associated commands and zoning, we could associate multiple CPUs to a specific thread or process.
The UltraSPARC T1 is compatible with Suns SPARC V9 standard, so IT managers with applications written for any UltraSPARC platform should have no problem porting them to the Sun Fire T2000.
While heavily threaded applications that are light on floating-point computations performed with no problem during our tests, the UltraSPARC T1s single floating- point unit could be a potential bottleneck. The server will likely take a performance hit on higher-end applications that have nonthreaded or heavy math workloads. Sun has already announced that the UltraSPARC T1s successor, code-named Niagara II, will have one floating point unit per core. That chip, however, is not expected until 2007.
Senior Writer Anne Chen can be reached at anne_chen@ziffdavis.com.
Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.
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Evaluation Shortlist
Hewlett-Packard Co.s ProLiant DL385 This server packs a winning combination of AMDs dual-core Opteron processors, a small form factor and excellent remote management capabilities (h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl385)
IBMs eServer x336 Armed with Intels newest dual-core Xeon chips, this servers form factor makes it a great fit for enterprises that run CPU-intensive applications but that are tight on rack space (www-03.IBM.com/servers/eserver/xseries/x336.html)
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