Sun Unveils Linux, Solaris On Intel Servers

Sun Microsystems

The company unveiled its first-ever servers based on Intel microprocessors, offering customers and solution providers a choice of Linux and Solaris operating systems.

"This is a new hardware direction for us," said Bill Roth, group marketing manager for Sun's Volume Systems Products Group.

Technology trends are driving Sun into a new direction, Roth said. "IDC said that there were 500,000 servers sold with Linux last year," he said. "350,000 of them were branded with names like IBM and Dell. Our share: zero. We think our hardware and software support will be meaningful for our customers."

The vendor today unveiled the 1U, 1.4GHz Pentium 3-based LX50, and plans to offer two software bundles with the server free of charge.

The Sun Linux bundle, based on Sun's own Linux distribution, includes Java 2 Standard Edition v. 1.4; Sun Streaming Server, one of the industry's first MPEG 4-based streaming software applications for content delivery; MySQL, an open-source database; Web cache software and Apache Web software; industry-standard SNMP-based management agents; and Sun Grid Engine, which allows the building of a computing grid.

Sun is the first major vendor with a complete Linux support offering, Roth said. "If customers buy the LX50 from us with Linux or Solaris, they get a complete channel," he said. "With IBM, they get a box with a CD. If they have a problem, IBM points you to the software vendor, like Red Hat. With Sun, one call takes care of support needs for hardware and software."

On the management side, the inclusion of SNMP support allows the LX50 to be managed by Sun or a competing application, Roth said. The LX50 also comes with agents to allow them to be managed by Sun Cobalt Control Station, an application used to manage the company's Cobalt server appliances.

The Solaris version of the LX50 will initially provide support for Solaris 8, and will include the SunScreen Firewall application which allows them to act as a firewall server on the edge of the network, which is where such entry-level servers are typically used, said Ravi Iyer, group marketing manager for Solaris core products in Sun's Software Division. The Sun Grid Engine can be downloaded.

The company also plans to extend the Solaris platform to allow Solaris 9 on the LX50. That version will include SunOne Application Server, Web Server, Portal Server and Directory Server, as well as the Sun Grid Engine, Iyer said.

While Sun claims to allow binary application compatibility across its entire server line based on the SPARC processor from the Netra to the E-15K, applications for the LX50 will have to be recompiled to run on other Sun servers because the LX50 is based on the Intel platform, said Iyer.

Roth said Sun is discussing moving the entire Sun One software stack to Linux. "We are moving that way," he said. "Web Server has been available for some time."

List price for the Sun LX50 starts at $2,795, including one Pentium 3 processor, 512 Mbytes of memory, and one 36-Gbyte, 10,000-rpm hard drive. For two 1.4GHz P-3 processors, 2 Gbytes of memory and one 36-Gbyte hard drive, the price is $5,295.

The Linux version is expected to ship in August, the Solaris 8 version in late September and the Solaris 9 version early next year. Pricing is the same regardless of the software bundle.

Low-cost manufacturing and software bundles will enable Sun to have the same margins as its other entry-level servers, Roth said. "They are actually manufactured on the same production lines as Dell," he said. "They will have a lower cost than Dell because we don't need to pay the Microsoft tax. We use our own software and our own operating system. Contrast this to how IBM and Dell manufacture their systems."

Roth said solution providers will make money on the new Linux server by helping customers customize their environments and add their own applications. "There will be a lot of customers who will use this for Web servers, print servers, file servers, etc.," he said. "But customization of the environment is where [solution providers can really add value."

Hardware and software support are optional, Roth said. "I expect service providers will buy these 1U servers in bulk," he said. "Many may not buy hardware support . . . If they need 100 servers, maybe they will buy 102 servers and just throw away a bad unit."

One Sun solution provider, who preferred to remain anonymous, said Linux is certainly prevalent in clients' infrastructures. "They are doing a lot with Linux development, and edge-of-the-network deployments," the solution provider said. "It's a need, it's coming. It's like a light in the tunnel. But I don't know if it's the train coming now or not."

Kip Lindberg, vice president of enterprise sales at Ncell Systems, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based Sun solution provider, said he finds it interesting that Sun has all of a sudden resurrected its Solaris-on-Intel plans.

Lindberg also said that big corporations and utilities are not shutting down their data centers to run Linux. "Linux plays a role," he said. "Will it run mission-critical applications? Yeah, but not in my lifetime. I see Linux damaging Microsoft more than anyone. But if you're looking at low-level blade servers running applications like Oracle, I don't see either Microsoft or Linux doing it."

Mission-critical applications simply are not ready for low-end servers, Lindberg said. At a training session this month, Veritas admitted as much by noting that a server might cost only $1,200, but for mission-critical applications you would need a $3,000 to $5,000 software license for Veritas and $9,000 per node for clustering. "Put your mission-critical applications on mission-critical servers," he said. "If you want to put them on these low-priced servers, come to see me. I want a part of that deal."

Lindberg said he will sell Sun's Linux and Solaris x86 servers in the low-end market. "But I don't do a lot in the low-end," he said.

There is a place for Linux in the data center, but it will take a long while to be adopted, said Keith Trotte, account representative at Sales Strategies, a Metuchen, N.J.-based Sun solution provider.

Trotte said Sun's introduction of Linux will not hurt Sales Strategies, but he wonders if it will be of any help. "It's hard to say," he said. "A lot of big companies are hesitating, but their engineers like it."

However, Trotte said he is all for Sun's introduction of Solaris on the x86 platform.

"The Solaris side helps us in shops where Windows customers are looking to try other operating systems," he said. "We see a lot of people frustrated with Windows, especially in regards to security. . . . This gives a better case when we walk into a Windows shop. We can tell them to standardize on a safe and secure platform."