Sun Expands Open Network Systems Architecture; New Servers Deliver Breakthrough Performance, Efficiency and Cost Savings for Enterprise Applications

Sun Boosts CMT Servers with 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus Processors and Logical Domains Enhancements Leveraging the Solaris Operating System; New Six-Core AMD Opteron-Processor Based Blades and Rackmount Servers Increase Performance by up to 30 Percent.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.- Enhancing its Open Network Systems architecture, which converges compute, networking, software and storage, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced new 1.6 GHz processors for its chip multi-threaded (CMT) Sun SPARC Enterprise systems running the Solaris Operating System (OS); new Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) virtualization software, leveraging the latest release of the Solaris OS; and, new Open Network Systems-based solutions aimed to help increase application performance and return on investment. Sun also rolled out new AMD Opteron processor-based blades and rackmount x64 servers. To take advantage of special offers and promotions for Sun’s new servers, visit http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy.

“Sun’s Solaris-based CMT servers blazed a trail with massive multi-threading, and virtualization and crypto at no extra cost,” said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun’s Open Network Systems provide an ideal combination of performance, efficiency and cost savings for the most critical applications in the enterprise.”

Sun’s Open Network Systems Architecture Delivers Speed, Simplicity and Savings Across the Data Center

Sun’s Open Network Systems architecture converges open computing, networking, software and storage technologies to help increase performance with massive efficiency and scalability that maximizes the economics of computing for enterprise business applications including BIDW, ERP and CRM. New products and solutions announced today include:

Sun 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus-based CMT systems and Sun LDoms 1.2 Software - Sun CMT servers and the Solaris OS deliver increased performance, scalability and reliability with built-in virtualization capabilities and on-chip cryptographic acceleration, at no additional cost. Combining new 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus processors with new Sun LDoms 1.2 software provides additional virtualization and compute performance, simplifying management, reducing I/O bottlenecks and accelerating application response time.

The latest release of Sun LDoms 1.2 software, combined with the latest Solaris OS release, delivers new features including:

* Built-in Configuration Tools - Provides simple and streamlined setup of Logical Domains with built-in command line configuration tools that enable customers to quickly begin using LDoms.
* CPU Power Management - Reduces system footprint through unique CPU power management, automatically powering off cores not in use.
* Jumbo Frames - Enhances network performance and efficiencies across network infrastructures with the support of jumbo frames, allowing customers to send more data at one time, reducing processing load requirements.
* Domain Mobility - Enables the dynamic migration of domains to accommodate increased resource demands, maintenance requirements, or to reduce energy consumption during low utilization periods via a single migration command.
* Built-in Recovery - Automatically backs up LDom configurations on disk in case of system corruption.
* Physical-to-Virtual Migration Tool - Allows customers to adopt LDom infrastructures quickly when moving from existing legacy SPARC/Solaris systems to Sun CMT systems.

Customers can further boost the performance of their CMT blades with Sun’s open networking technologies like the Sun Blade 6000 Virtual Network Express Module (NEM), a high performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) rapid network virtualization provisioning network module delivers outstanding cost per port and takes complexity out of the network infrastructure by eliminating a full switching layer. More information on Sun networking solutions is available at http://www.sun.com/networking.

Sun Open Network Systems Enterprise 2.0 Solution for Oracle - Brings together Sun CMT blade servers running the Solaris OS, the Sun Blade 6000 Multi-Fabric NEM and Open Storage with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database to create an ideal platform for deploying Enterprise 2.0 applications. Customers can deploy enterprise infrastructure up to 75 percent faster than traditional approaches and consolidate multiple application instances through built-in virtualization on Sun’s energy-efficient, flash-ready CMT blade servers. More information is available at: http://www.sun.com/oracleweb

Sun x64 blade systems and servers - Sun’s new x64 blades and rackmount servers with the latest Six-Core AMD Opteron processors are ideal for virtualization, enterprise workloads, datacenter consolidation and compute-intensive high performance computing (HPC). Servers with the new Six-Core AMD Opteron processors include the Sun Blade X6440 and X6240 server modules, the Sun Fire X4440 server and the Sun Fire X4540 storage server. Sun is also previewing the Sun Fire X4640 server, a modular 48-core, 4RU rackmount x64 server with exceptional virtualization capacity for application consolidation and improved server utilization. For more information on Sun x64 blades and rackmount servers with Six-Core AMD Opteron processors, visit: http://www.sun.com/x64/amd.

Sun Sets World Records with Updated CMT Systems

To date, Sun’s SPARC Enterprise servers have posted more than 60 industry-leading performance results. New records announced today include:

Two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark - The SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (4 processors/32 cores/256 threads), set a four-processor world record on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark with 4,720 SAP SD Benchmark users for all systems running the SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode). The SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark represents the critical tasks performed in real-world ERP business environments and demonstrates the performance of competitive systems running order- and invoice-processing workloads. Running the SAP solution with Oracle Database, the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server surpassed the competing IBM System 550 server with four POWER6 processors by 26 percent with 3,752 SAP SD Benchmark users(1). This result also highlights the optimal performance of SAP ERP on the Solaris OS and the seamless multilingual support available for SPARC Enterprise systems running SAP applications.

SPECjAppServer2004 - The SPARC Enterprise T5440 server running seven instances of Oracle WebLogic Server using Solaris Containers technology, outperformed all other competitive solutions with a single node on the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark with 7,661.16 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. This benchmark captures the end-to-end application and database performance of a vendor’s solutions and highlights the scalability of the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server in both application and database server roles. Running the latest versions of the Solaris 10 OS and Java Server software backed by Oracle Database 11g, the SPARC Enterprise T5440 server delivered 74 percent better performance than the Intel Xeon-based HP DL580 G5 solution and demonstrated a 21 percent improvement over the previous 1.4GHz-based SPARC Enterprise score(2).

SPECjbb2005 - The Sun Blade T6320 server module, running OpenSolaris 2009.06 and the latest version of Sun’s Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software (version 1.6.0_14 Performance Release), has posted a single-chip world record on SPECjbb2005 benchmark. This record-breaking result represents a real-world server-side Java application deployment scenario and demonstrates the optimized performance of Sun’s software offerings. With a 20 percent performance boost over the previous 1.4GHz single-chip result, Sun’s blades demonstrate outstanding scalability while allowing customers to easily expand their blades infrastructure via a simple in-chassis upgrade(3).

For more information on Sun’s CMT benchmarks, visit: http://www.sun.com/benchmarks.

Sun’s Open Network Systems-Based Enterprise Solutions

Sun offers a full portfolio of enterprise-class, Sun Rapid Solution offerings combining its Open Network Systems architecture and key ISV partner technologies with comprehensive support services to help bring mission-critical business applications online quickly and help achieve better return on investment. These solutions include:

Sun Optimized Oracle CRM Solution - Sun CMT systems, powered by the Solaris 10 OS, with built-in virtualization and Oracle’s Siebel CRM software, provide a platform with unmatched power and space efficiencies, enabling users to consolidate up to 14,000 Siebel CRM users on one SPARC Enterprise T5440 server. More information is available at: http://www.sun.com/solutions/enterprise/siebel/.

Oracle Optimized Warehouse for Sun (OWI) - Sun and Oracle deliver optimized data warehousing solutions in support of the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative (OWI), which helps speed deployment times and reduce risk. These reference configurations combine the Oracle Database with Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series, CMT and Sun Fire x64 servers running the Solaris OS, and Sun Storage arrays. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/owi.

Enterprise Grid Solutions from Sun and Oracle - Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Real Application Clusters environments with Sun’s SPARC Enterprise and x64 servers, the Solaris OS and storage can allow customers to maximize the benefits of grid computing with minimal cost and complexity on a variety of enterprise application workloads including OLTP and BIDW. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/solutions/enterprise/oracle/grid/.

Sun Eco-Optimized SAP Data Center - SAP business applications and the SAP NetWeaver technology platform paired with Sun’s SPARC Enterprise servers and storage systems deliver end-to-end virtualization solutions that optimize datacenter infrastructures, reduce power, cooling and space requirements, as well as lower maintenance costs, allowing customers to achieve greater business flexibility and faster end-user response times. More information is available at: http://www.sun.com/sap/upgrades.

Sun Infrastructure for IBM WebSphere Deployments - Sun CMT servers and networking technologies with the IBM WebSphere middleware platform offer high performance deployment solutions ideal for consolidation, cutting up to half the spend on licensing and hardware costs. More information is available at: http://www.sun.com/websphere.

Sun Open Network Systems Enterprise 2.0 Solution for MySQL - Brings together Sun’s x64 blade servers, the Sun Blade 6000 Multi-Fabric NEM and Open Storage with MySQL Enterprise to run MySQL-based Web services, rich media, Enterprise 2.0 services and virtualization applications with breakaway performance and efficiency. More information is available at: http://www.sun.com/systems/solutions/mysql/deployment.jsp.

Service Delivery Network Architecture - A Just-In-Time, self-provisioning packaging methodology over optimized data communication paths. The Service Delivery Network Architecture supports a variety of Sun technologies including Project Crossbow, Solaris Containers and Sun’s InfiniBand and Ethernet products.

Availability and Pricing

Sun’s enhanced CMT systems with 1.6 GHz processors start at $23,925 for blade server modules and $33,339 for rack servers. Sun’s new x64 products start at $2,794 U.S. list price. All prices quoted are in U.S. dollars. More detail is available at http://www.sun.com/cmt and http://www.sun.com/x64. Sun is also offering a number of promotions on the systems announced today. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/tradeins.