AnandTech Exclusive: Sun's sub-$1000 SunFire X2100 Server
by Kristopher Kubicki on September 12, 2005 1:29 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Final Thoughts
Today's look at the SunFire X2100 was one of the most exciting system launches that we've seen in a while. The SunFire X2100 takes all of the better elements of nForce4, Opteron and IPMI, and combines them into a very affordable, scalable node. Sun manages to cut the cost of many of the more expensive components in favor of efficient, cutting-edge tech instead. Particularly impressive is Sun's ability to sell these components at such a reasonable cost. Yes, as ironic as "Sun" and "reasonable cost" sound together in a sentence, the low end Aquarius servers are actually a very good value. Whiteboxing the components alone for Sun's "small" configuration of the X2100 would generally run in the neighborhood of $500, but other amenities like the roll-out rack rails, hot swap SATA drive bays, Solaris 10, and IPMI service processor quickly escalate the price further.
The performance of our "extra large" configuration was nearly on par with dual Opteron servers and workstations that we've looked at in the past, but at a fraction of the cost and footprint. Using Sun's N1 and other management tools actually make it much more cost effective to buy four Aquarius nodes (perhaps only one with a hard drive even) rather than a single quad Opteron server (if your particular application scales, that is).
Another interesting position of Sun's new direction includes the prospect that end users will probably reconfigure the hardware (particularly the entry level components), as soon as they get them. Even though Sun is happy to provide clients with bleeding edge hardware off the factory floor, during my conferences with Sun, there seemed to be an expectation that end users buying a few of these new SunFires will add a few more sticks of memory, or a PCIe InifiniBand adaptor - particularly on the entry level x64 servers like the one that we saw today. Sun doesn't seem too upset about this either; the company's new direction seems very clearly laid out toward selling efficient and innovative technology as a bottom line rather than gouging repeat customers on proprietary hardware.
Now that Mr. Bechtolsheim's influence has started to propagate through all levels of Sun again, the new products and services of the company are clearly redefining themselves with his direction. Sun is clearly using their size to reclaim a lot of territory that they lost after the dot-bomb, and products like the SunFire X2100 will continue to get them back to that point.
Today's look at the SunFire X2100 was one of the most exciting system launches that we've seen in a while. The SunFire X2100 takes all of the better elements of nForce4, Opteron and IPMI, and combines them into a very affordable, scalable node. Sun manages to cut the cost of many of the more expensive components in favor of efficient, cutting-edge tech instead. Particularly impressive is Sun's ability to sell these components at such a reasonable cost. Yes, as ironic as "Sun" and "reasonable cost" sound together in a sentence, the low end Aquarius servers are actually a very good value. Whiteboxing the components alone for Sun's "small" configuration of the X2100 would generally run in the neighborhood of $500, but other amenities like the roll-out rack rails, hot swap SATA drive bays, Solaris 10, and IPMI service processor quickly escalate the price further.
The performance of our "extra large" configuration was nearly on par with dual Opteron servers and workstations that we've looked at in the past, but at a fraction of the cost and footprint. Using Sun's N1 and other management tools actually make it much more cost effective to buy four Aquarius nodes (perhaps only one with a hard drive even) rather than a single quad Opteron server (if your particular application scales, that is).
Another interesting position of Sun's new direction includes the prospect that end users will probably reconfigure the hardware (particularly the entry level components), as soon as they get them. Even though Sun is happy to provide clients with bleeding edge hardware off the factory floor, during my conferences with Sun, there seemed to be an expectation that end users buying a few of these new SunFires will add a few more sticks of memory, or a PCIe InifiniBand adaptor - particularly on the entry level x64 servers like the one that we saw today. Sun doesn't seem too upset about this either; the company's new direction seems very clearly laid out toward selling efficient and innovative technology as a bottom line rather than gouging repeat customers on proprietary hardware.
Now that Mr. Bechtolsheim's influence has started to propagate through all levels of Sun again, the new products and services of the company are clearly redefining themselves with his direction. Sun is clearly using their size to reclaim a lot of territory that they lost after the dot-bomb, and products like the SunFire X2100 will continue to get them back to that point.
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allanw - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
The two hard drives can be set up for RAID 0, 1 or 0+1 via the BIOS.I don't get it. How do you do raid 0+1 with only two drives?
Deinonych - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link
You can't. RAID 0+1 requires a minimum of 4 drives.stephenbrooks - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
Darn. I could get two of these things for less than my current desktop PC cost. (Though without graphics card etc. of course!)Jmonk - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
I was stoked to read the article on the X2100 because I'm currently in the market for an entry-level small business server. Doing my homework I found that other name-brand, entry-level servers were obviously too expensive for their spec's. The Small X2100 base-model ($745, no HDD, 512MB DDR, no DVD) is priced right where I'm looking at, but the spec's are relatively weak considering that I can build an equivalent 1U server (slightly faster, Athlon 64) for $475, purchased from online retailers. If I were to move up a notch to the Medium X2100, I find myself completely out of my price range.So is the name-brand and the 3-year warranty worth $270 extra for a somewhat weaker machine? The often heard "save money, build it yourself" suggestion is a known misconception when it comes to desktop PC's, but I was surprised to see that it's completely feasible and worthwhile in regards to servers.
Furen - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
If you know how to do build it, know how to configure it and dont mind having to deal with any incompatibilities and issues yourself then go for it and build it yourself, you will save quite a bit. Personally, I think this server is pretty well priced since it's pretested, pre-assembled, in a thermally-balanced case (not that thermals are too much of a problem with K8s right now) and a decent warranty. All possible incompatibilities have already been dealt with, it also has two nice hotswapable SATA bays, a half-height 8x PCI-E slot for possible expansion and comes preconfigured with Solaris 10 (which I like, though you may not).Jmonk - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link
Actually, the Small X2100 doesn't come with a Solaris option without additional cost.But you're right that there is certainly an amount of confidence with the Sun servers that neither the admin nor the owner of the company may expect with a self-built machine.
My main point is that desktop PC's are much more affordable than self-built - pre-testing, -assembling, -OS-loading and warranties just sweeten the deal. But why aren't servers to that point?
Gholam - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
The board used is Tyan Tomcat K8E, with some components like PCI slots just not soldered in. Doesn't mean it's bad - I have a server running here on that one board and an A64 4400+, and it's an excellent machine - but c'mon, give credit where it's due :)Ahkorishaan - Monday, September 12, 2005 - link
I would really like to see a price point comparison between a Sun AMD, a Dell Pentium, any IBM, and any HP. I bet it would look rather interesting. Sun is indeed coming to the fore again.MCSim - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link
Check out the Sun's NC05Q3 webcast. They are making some comparisons there.Deinonych - Monday, September 12, 2005 - link
It would have been nice to see how this server stacks up against comparable offerings from IBM, HP and Dell (even though Dell doesn't offer an AMD server). Comparing it to other Sun products is nice if you only buy Sun.