System News for Sun Users - The Blog

Low-end Server Sales Rise, While High-end Systems Fall

The headline for IDC’s press release on the 4Q09 server market sums things up nicely: “Worldwide Server Market Rebounds Sharply in Fourth Quarter as Demand for Blades and x86 Systems Leads the Way.” Gartner found that while the worldwide server market recovered in the second half of 2009 from the economic downturn, plummeting sales in high-end systems resulted in a decline in overall revenue in the fourth quarter.

(Get More Information . .)

Despite Decline in Third Quarter Sales

Server sales are beginning to stabilize, reports IDC and Gartner in analyses on the July-September period. The IT research and advisory firms both found revenue down in the worldwide server market during the third quarter of 2009, however the decrease was less than anticipated and demonstrated an increase over the first and second quarters of this year.

(Get More Information . .)

Holds Its Own Against Dell’s PowerEdge R610, HP’s ProLiant DL360 G6

The glowing review of the Sun Fire X4170 in PC Pro by Dave Mitchell cites little to find fault with in Sun’s Xeon-5570 powered processors, allowing that there is merit in the claim that the X4170 holds its own against competing 4U solutions. This level of performance, he notes, comes with a TDP of 95 watts while also supporting Hyper-Threading and Turbo-Boost. He adds that the 5570s support memory speeds up to 1,333MHz and have the highest speed QPI of 6.4GT/sec.

(Get More Information . .)

Also Gains Efficiency, Speed, Networking Support

By working with Sun Startup Essentials program, MusicMetric of London paid 50% less than it originally estimated for the cost of hardware and cut server power-consumption 60% by choosing Sun over Dell. Networking is another benefit MusicMetric has reaped with the Sun Startup Essentials program. “We try to go to as many Sun events as we can,” commented MusicMetric’s Greg Mead. “It’s a really good way to meet other people dealing with similar challenges and Stewart Townsend, a Startup Essentials Manager, has introduced us to some great business leads.”

(Get More Information . .)

Watch Out Dell and HP, Here Comes Some Serious Competition

Five out of six stars and the comment that the Sun Fire X4140 is one classy 1U rack server that has more of everything than the competition and is very competitively priced is the verdict pronounced by PC Pro’s Dave Mitchell on this Sun solution. In Mitchell’s assessment, with the Sun Fire X4140, Sun has come up with a server that will give both Dell and HP some serious competition at the lower end of the server market.

(Get More Information . .)