Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to combine its storage and server businesses into a new group called Sun Systems, according to a blog posting last week by CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz. The realignment comes about two years after the vendor paid about $4.1 billion to acquire tape storage vendor Storage Technology Corp. The new business unit will be responsible for aligning the company’s server, storage, virtualization and networking technologies, Schwartz said. Such a combination could ease the process of managing IT systems at Oregon State University, said Chuck Sears, manager of research computing at the school’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. The university runs both Sun servers and storage systems, Sears said.
Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO and president Jonathan Schwartz this week disclosed in his blog that the company plans to combine its storage and server product organizations into a new group called the Sun Systems. The realignment comes about two years after Sun paid about $4.1 billion to acquire tape vendor Storage Technology Corp.
The new business unit will be responsible for aligning the company’s server, storage, virtualization and networking technologies, Schwartz said.
Schwartz suggested in the blog post on Monday that the decision to combine the units comes as IT executives struggle to manage increasingly integrated system, storage and networking environments.
The new unit will continue building and selling stand-alone storage systems, he said.
(Full article ‘Sun CEO discloses plan to merge storage, server units’)
Eight months after it agreed to begin using Intel Corp.’s x86 chips again, Sun Microsystems Inc. last week announced a pair of rack-mounted servers built around Xeon processors. The Sun Fire X4450 can hold four of Intel’s Xeon 7300 quad-core processors; the Sun Fire X4150 has two sockets and can support Intel’s older Xeon 5300 quad-core devices or its dual-core chips. Bill Heilman, a platform specialist at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, has been beta-testing the X4450 and plans to use it in a consolidation project to help cut data center power costs. “We want to get away from server sprawl,” he said. Sun officials said a full line of Intel-based systems will follow. But the company also plans to ship machines based on Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s new Opteron quad-core chip by year’s end.
(Full article ‘Sun Raises Curtain on Xeon Server Line’)
Hewlett-Packard Co. launched a server based on Intel Corp.’s new Tigerton quad-core Xeon processor Thursday, battling IBM for customers who run data-intensive business applications like ERP and virtualization software.
HP announced the rack-based ProLiant DL580 G5 and the blade-shaped ProLiant BL680c G5, each using four of Intel’s Xeon 7300 series chips.
Compared with HP’s current ProLiant servers with dual-core versions of the Xeon or Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron chips, the new servers are designed to better support virtualization, allowing users to handle their applications with a smaller number of servers than they need today, the company said.
The announcement comes less than a week before AMD is expected to launch its own quad-core server chip, called Barcelona.
(Full article ‘HP picks Intel chip for quad-core servers’)
IBM is expanding the number of x86-based servers and blade systems on which it offers Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Solaris operating system, the two vendors announced Thursday.
Under the agreement, IBM will begin distributing Solaris and offering Sun’s customer service plans on its System x3650, x3755 and x3850 servers and its BladeCenter HS21 and LS41 machines. IBM already supported Sun’s Unix derivative on some BladeCenter systems.
The extended support for Solaris is part of IBM’s strategy to offer users a range of operating systems, and the deal gives Sun a boost in its effort to have Solaris run on a wider set of hardware.
(Full article ‘IBM broadens its support for Sun’s Solaris software’)