Compared to Intel or AMD, Sun Microsystems has traditionally focused more on high-end, high-powered
servers and supercomputers than on desktop home computers. It should come as no surprise, then,
that Sun produces some of the most advanced High-performance computing (HPC) systems available.
In fact, they offer not just one, but several different types of HPC solutions for different computing needs.
High performance computing uses either supercomputers or computer clusters to solve advanced problems
requiring millions of calculations. Although it is most commonly associated with scientific research,
recently high performance computing has been increasingly applied to business uses such as data
warehousing, transaction processing and line-of-business (LOB) applications.
Sun's most powerful HPC system is currently the Sun Constellation System, which was introduced in 2007.
In consists of several different hardware and software components. At its heart lies the Sun Fire X4500
data server, which combines server and storage functions. It contains two dual-core processors and an
incredible forty-eight 1000 GB SATA drives, for a total of 48 terabytes of storage. It also uses the
Sun StorageTek 5800 System for its data archive for clients to store large amounts of digital information,
such as medical information, digitized historical records, or rich media. It uses a customer-definable
metadata index to tag, search, and retrieve information. At the bottom hardware level lies one or more
Sun Blade systems, which are essentially just interface terminals for users to interact with the system.
The Constellation System runs on either OpenSolaris or Linux. It also makes use of the Sun Grid Engine,
a workload scheduler for computer clusters and server farms. On the physical level, it manages and
schedules the allocation of hardware resources such as processors, memory, and hard disk space. On the
software level, it coordinates the scheduling, dispatching, and managing of large numbers of standalone,
parallel, or interactive user jobs. The Sun Grid is also offered as a service purchasable separately
from the Sun Constellation System.
Sun offers another high performance computing system, the Sun Modular Datacenter. Although perhaps not
as powerful as the Sun Constellation System, is much more flexible. The Modular Datacenter (MD) is essentially
a portable server farm. It is built into a standard 20-foot shipping container, and therefore can be
transported to any location in the world through existing transportation networks. It is ideal for locations
that lack the infrastructure to support a server farm or in situations where a data center is needed in a
location only temporarily, and the customer wants to avoid having to acquire or construct a building to
house one. Upon arrival, a 280-server data center can be quickly deployed and made operational for 1/100th
of the cost of constructing a traditional data center building. The only drawback is that an external
chiller is required to operate the Modular Datacenter.Some SUN hard drive model is recommended.
Specification:
Style SATA
Part Number XTC-ST1CF-2TB7K 542-0164
Application Server
Size 3.5 inches
HDD Capacity 2TB
Interface Type SATA Hard Drive
Cache 32MB
Place of Origin Singapore
Spindle Speed 7200rpm
Specification:
Style FC
Part Number XTC-FC1CF-300G15KZ 540-7156
Application Server
Size 3.5 inches
HDD Capacity 300GB
Interface Type FC Hard Drive
Cache 32MB
Place of Origin Singapore
Spindle Speed 15000rpm
Data Transfer Rate 2 GB/S
SUN XTA-SS1NG-600GB15K 542-0143 2540 600 GB 3.5 15K SAS Hard Drive
Specification:
Style SAS
Part Number XTA-SS1NG-600GB15K 542-0143
Application Server
Size 3.5 inches
HDD Capacity 600GB
Interface Type SAS Hard Drive
Cache 32MB
Place of Origin Singapore
Spindle Speed 15000rpm
Specification:
Style SAS
Part Number SEWX3B11Z 541-3531
Application Server
Size 2.5 inches
HDD Capacity 146 GB
Interface Type SAS Hard Drive
Cache 32MB
Place of Origin Singapore
Spindle Speed 10000rpm
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