Games to Rely on Wide Array of Hardware, Software, Consulting Services from Sun
Sun Microsystems of Canada will be responsible for managing the IT infrastructure supporting the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) in Vancouver, Canada. The assignment entails connecting 15 networked venues and three datacenters, running multiple business applications and an integration test lab, and keeping 10,000 media outlets up to date with over 100 TB of data. This technology infrastructure will handle daily operations as well as share real-time data with billions worldwide.
Latest Release Adds Support for Intel 5500 and Six-core AMD Processors
Oracle VM is server virtualization software that fully supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. The latest release is version 2.2, which features the latest Xen-based, industry-standard hypervisor, Xen 3.4, and provides performance enhancements for customers running Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, as well as six-core AMD Opteron processors.
Adds ZFS User and Group Quotas, L2ARC Support, Faster Patching, and More
Sun released Solaris 10 10/09 with new and enhanced features, such as up to two Tbytes disk support for installing and booting the OS, ZFS and Flash installation support, updates to setting ZFS user and group quotas, support of L2ARC, power management capabilities to leverage the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, a “P2V” (Physical to Virtual) method, faster patching and parallel zone patching, etc. There are many more system administration, installation, system resources, device management, system performance, driver, and freeware enhancements included.
An Illuminata Spotlight piece considers the trend of virtualization moving into business applications, and how that is both reflected and enabled by the latest generation of Sun servers based on the new six-core AMD Opteron processors. The evolution of virtualization software, processors and systems are covered. Sun systems discussed include the Sun Fire X4140, X4440, X4640, Sun Blade X6240, X6440 and 6048.
There are two new PTO options for Sun Fire X4540 with six-core AMD Opteron Processor 2435. The two new PTOs offer either two AMD Opteron 2435 CPUs, 32 GB memory and 24 TB of storage or two 2435 CPUs, 32 GB memory and 48 TB of storage. The desired system will be preinstalled with Solaris 10 Update 7 OS. The new CPU Opteron 2435 processor has six cores in each CPU as compared to the quad core CPU for higher throughput I/O and better data throughput rate for each CPU.
Know Your Needs, Blogger Recommends, Then Choose the Processor
The IT atmosphere is clouding up and, as it does, administrators are going to have to address certain issues, among them, which is the most suitable processor for a particular use of cloud computing. Mr. Benchmark provides a few suggestions in this direction in his blog, “What processor will fuel your first private cloud: Intel Nehalem or AMD Istanbul?”
Six-Core Performance in the Same Quad-Core Footprint
The Sun Blade X6240 and X6440 server modules now support the six-core AMD Opteron processors. Find out more about the specific model numbers and what features these new six-core processors offer. Sun also announced that the Sun Blade X6240 now supports 8GB DIMMs, and that there are new Assemble-to-Order (ATO) blade assemblies required for both Sun Blade X6240 and X6440 server modules with the new six-core processors.
With Web 2.0 Toolkit Olio and iGen with PostgreSQL 8.4
Sun recently integrated AMD’s six-core Opteron processors in its x64 blades and rackmount servers. With six processing units on each chip, the new processors help deliver increased performance for environments such as virtualization, database and web serving. Sun Staff Engineer Jignesh K. Shah decided to test drive the Sun Fire X4140 set up with 2 x 6-core Opterons, 36GB RAM and Web 2.0 toolkit Olio. Shah also tested the final release of PostgreSQL 8.4 (64-bits) in the download of Solaris 10 binaries on the system. See what he found.
Open Source for America to Advocate Broader Support, Participation
Sun is one of more than 70 organizations and individuals that have joined together to form a new coalition called Open Source for America that will promote the use of free and open source software to the U.S. Federal Government. Gartner recently estimated by 2011 more than 25 percent of government vertical, domain-specific applications will either be open source, contain open source application components or be developed as community source.
Also Announced: Sun Open Network Systems Enterprise 2.0 Solution for Oracle, New Six-Core AMD Opteron-Processor Servers
Chip multi-threaded (CMT) Sun SPARC Enterprise systems now offer 1.6 GHz processors. When used with the recently released Logical Domains 1.2, users can expect to experience additional virtualization and compute performance, simplified management, a reduction in I/O bottlenecks and accelerated application response time, Sun reports. The company also announced the Sun Open Network Systems Enterprise 2.0 Solution for Oracle that claims enterprise infrastructure deployment at up to 75 percent faster rates than traditional approaches. Additionally, new x64 blades and rackmount servers with the latest six-core AMD Opteron processors are available.
