Sun Fire V40z: Four Opterons in a 3U
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 22, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Final Thoughts
Sun obviously gave us a lot of data to digest here. We took a look at a piece of hardware that truly has a few competitors; HP’s ProLiant DL585 seems to be the only remotely Tier 1 solution – and not surprisingly, pricing out a similar setup as the one that we tested today from Sun, which was well over $22,000. Second Tier competitors like ASA and Appro are able to provide solutions based on similar specifications, but even those readily approach $20,000 without half the management or PCI-X options. Furthermore, Sun provides the smallest implementation of any of these quad Opteron servers in a 3U form; the ProLiant DL585 comes in 4U form only. There are many more small differences between each server, but we took the time to illustrate the design wins and flaws of just the Sun Fire V40z in this analysis; HP and Appro will have to wait for another day.Sun has a speed daemon on their hands, and they know it. Sun was very quick to announce the next generation V40z (4 x Opteron 852, 8GB PC-3200) that set more than half a dozen performance records at LinuxWorld last week. With only a single server running on four of the 130nm Opterons in this review, it’s difficult for us to judge Sun’s performance on the market as a whole. However, the enthusiastic approach to Linux coupled with high quality design and management already assure that Sun has won the battle to most, without even raising a finger for benchmarks. In the world of High Power, High Availability computing, stability and features go much further than a 1% boost in performance.
As far as stability goes, we know that the Sun Fire V40z is certainly best of breed. Between the Motorola Service Processor, dedicated out-of-band management network, redundant 760W power supplies and hot swappable active cooling, it becomes real hard for us to determine a single point of failure that could cripple a server. The seven featured PCI-X expansion slots are also a great addition to the feature portfolio of the V40z, even if Sun (and we) recommend that the seventh PCI adaptor goes unused.
Things are just starting to get really interesting at Sun, and at AMD. Sun’s Galaxy 8-way Opteron servers will soon be upon us, but in the meantime, we are already hearing about V40z configurations with dual core Opterons. Obviously, a dual core V40z – which is already dual core ready – will give Sun the only 3U, 8-way Opteron that we’ve heard of. Between dual core Opterons and continual improvements on the 90nm Opteron steppings, server administrators have a lot to look forward to this year.
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RyanVM - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Did anybody else find it confusing that the reviewed system had CG-stepping Opteron 850s and Kris brought up E4-stepping Opteron 852s on multiple occasions? What CPUs were actually in the system?SUOrangeman - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Last page, .."Sun has a speed **daemon** on their hands, ..."
Freudian slip, hehe? Nice read nonetheless.
-SUO
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
MrEMan: Mediaplex is just an advertising server. Some advertisers (like NewEgg) host their banners on Mediaplex so they don't destroy their bandwidth. Sometimes when an ad campaign is hitting too many impressions the Mediaplex tag will revert to a 2x2 or a 1x1 pixel so that they don't harm their click through rates. It has nothing to do with spyware or malware or adware.Kristopher
MrEMan - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Anandtech,What is with the 1/16" x 1/16" graphic (1280x1024 resolution on a 19" CRT monitor) for adfarm.mediaplex.com ?
Is it there with your permission or did someone hack your site?
If it is there with your permission, I must say I am surprised that you would put such stealth adware garbage links on your site.
jcourtney - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
I'd love to see some benchmarks with Solaris instead of or vs. Linux for reference too. Nice read though as usual.ElFenix - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
"particularly considering the fact that the V40z does not utilize any active cooling directly on their CPU heat sinks"whoa, proper spelling of heat sink!
now i'm going to harp on the fact that blowing air across a radiator with a fan is not active cooling. air conditioning is active cooling, turning on the ceiling fan is not.
=)
nice read
Hikari - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
I wish I could see a comparison of this and that Quad Opteron HP server. I have the HP one budgeted for this year already... (we're also a Sun shop).I didn't see an option for 15k RPM drives though. I could put in like 5-146GB@15k RPM in the HP which was one reason I was leaning towards it.
lihoyin - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Looking forward for a comparsion with HP DL585 / DL 385, both are also Monsters!Sunner - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Googer, that's true, Sun basically just rebadges Newisys servers, the same is true of the V20Z, in fact IIRC you can actually find some Newisys marks left on the servers :)Anyway, Kris, any chance of a couple of benchmarks with a 2.6 based distro?
2.6 has, among other things, good NUMA support, something that would be nice to have when running a 4-way Opteron ;)
//Sunner
dougSF30 - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Another 250/850 typo on page 3: "Below, you can see one of the Opteron 250s is exposed from under the copper heat sink on the daughterboard."