Latest UltraSPARC® III Chip-Based SunTone[tm] Cluster Platform Decreases Complexity and Cuts Deployment Time up to 80 Percent
Building on then proven methodology of its successful Cluster Platform 220/1000, Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced its next-generation, entry-level Cluster Platform 280/3, which provide significantly greater memory and storage flexibility. The fourth offering to be added to the family of SunTone™ Cluster Platforms, the latest solution continues Sun’s efforts to improve total cost of ownership (TCO) for its customers.
Powered by redundant UltraSPARC® III chip-based Sun Fire™ 280R servers and highly scalable, mirrored Sun StorEdge™ T3 arrays, the pre-integrated and tested Cluster Platform 280/3 is designed to provide high availability with Sun[tm] Cluster 3.0’s failover protection and load balancing technologies while decreasing complexity via a single, integrateable stack. Sun’s integrateable platform, unlike other system vendors, provides a building-block approach to customer solutions. As a result, delivery is accelerated and customer deployment times have been cut by up to 80 percent, which ultimately equates to better customer TCO.
“Sun’s family of SunTone Cluster Platforms arrive on the dock ready-to-deploy, simplifying installation and offering a pre-integrated, interoperability-tested solution to meet our critical needs for uptime and reliability. Choosing Sun’s Cluster Platform 220/1000 was an easy, cost-effective choice for us,” says Claus Bo Nielsen, CTO of estructure.net, a Managed Service Provider in Denmark. “We have a banking client that requires the utmost in security and availability. The Cluster Platform 220/1000 met our client’s crucial needs for high availability, reliability, and security for its e-business applications. Installation time for implementing this SunTone Cluster Platform into their specific environment was cut from two months to just days, translating into big savings for both estructure.net and our customer.”
Next-generation Platform Adds Flexibility and Improves Management
The Cluster Platform 280/3 offers additional enhancements to meet customers’ needs for memory and storage flexibility, reduced complexity and swifter deployment. New features include:
- Memory flexibility – 4GB or 8GB;
- Storage flexibility – 327GB or 660GB;
- Choice of volume management software:
Solstice Disk Suite 4.2.1 or VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1.1; - Pre-installed and configured Sun Cluster 3.0 NFS High Availability agents; and
- Sun[tm] Management Center 3.0 integrated to provide system monitoring for the entire cluster.
“Building on the success of the Cluster Platform 220/1000, the new Cluster Platform 280/3 broadens our line of SunTone Cluster Platforms by incorporating the new generation of UltraSPARC III chip-based server technology,” said Gary Beck, vice president of Sun’s Integrated Products Group. “With improved memory, storage and system management capabilities built into the Cluster Platform 280/3, Sun continues to innovate with reliable, cost-effective platforms that provide the simplified solutions our customers are looking for.”
Pre-integration and Testing Lead to Faster Deployment
Sun’s Cluster Platform 280/3 provides upfront savings with a pre-architected and engineered infrastructure designed to address high availability needs and eliminate the time-consuming–and potentially complex–evaluation and design process. The platform is designed and tested to meet the SunTone Program’s best practices for quality delivery of web-enabled services. Led by Sun, the SunTone Program is one of the first collaborative industry efforts to define these standards for high quality of service. Through the program’s engineering best practices, the latest SunTone Cluster Platform offers on-going savings by reducing the risk of human, process and product errors, industry-recognized sources for problems.
Current SunTone Cluster Platform customers, for example, have credited Sun’s pre-integrated and tested systems for decreasing deployment times from up to a week to just one day, accelerating customers’ time to benefit and maximizing their productivity. Furthermore, the new platform has been enhanced to provide an “out-of-the-box” file server solution by installing and preconfiguring Sun Cluster 3.0 NFS High Availability agents, further slashing the time investment required to get to production.
New Cluster Platform Ready for Wide Range of Industries
Part of Sun’s growing portfolio of integrated and tested SunTone Cluster Platforms, the entry-level Cluster Platform 280/3 provides the reliability and serviceability for use as a highly available file server, Web server, or small database platform in a broad range of industries, including energy, Internet services, education and healthcare. The new platform’s key components include:
- Redundant Sun Fire 280R servers with two 750MHz UltraSPARC III processors on each server;
- Mirrored Sun StorEdge T3 arrays;
- Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment, 07/01;
- Sun Cluster 3.0, 07/01; and
- Sun Netra[tm] T1 AC200 management server.
Available worldwide immediately from Sun and its authorized resellers, pricing for the Cluster Platform 280/3 begins at $173,500 (U.S. Dollars). For more information, go to: sun.com/architectures-platforms/suntoneplatforms/cp280-3.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — The Network Is The Computer[tm] — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, Netra, SunTone, Sun Fire and StorEdge are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.