Lab Notes

Sun Blade 6000

Sun just announced the new Sun Blade 6000 system. Sun, in our opinion, is putting out the nicest server kit in the business, and this new system is no exception. It allows you to mix and match Sparc and x64 processors (both AMD and Intel, the first fruit of the Sun/Intel partnership announced a couple of months ago) in the same blade chassis. The pricing is an incredible value, with the chassis starting at $4,995.

They've come out just in time for us to consider for a big project we're starting here at the lab. I suspect we'll end up going the single-server-at-a-time route, though: the chassis holds ten blades in a 10U package, so it uses the same amount of rack space as 10 1U servers. What's more, the modules are price-competitve with similarly equipped standalone servers, so the blade system will end up a little more expensive (since you still have to buy the chassis). If we needed the enhanced manageability, though, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the blade system.

Interesting note: core for core, the Opterons are a good deal less expensive than the Xeons. We like seeing that, being the Opteron bigots we are ;-)