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Archived Report
Oracle
Sun Blade Servers

by Brady Hicks

Copyright 2017, Faulkner Information Services. All Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00018909

Publication Date: 1707

Report Type: PRODUCT

Preview

Oracle recently discontinued its family of Sun Blade Servers, instead
integrating some of its technology into its broader Server portfolio. This
technology is based on Oracle’s 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $7.4
billion. Products from Oracle’s former Sun Blade Servers portfolio included
SPARC Blade Sever Modules, x86 Server Blade Modules, various Sun Blade Chassis
options, and Sun Blade Networking products. This archived report takes a
detailed look at the former Oracle Sun Blade Server family.

Report Contents:

• Description
• 
  Related Faulkner Reports
• Vendor
• Applications
• Environment
• Support
• Pricing
• Competitors
• Web Links

Description

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Oracle’s lineup of Sun Blade Servers were inherited from the company’s $7.4
billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010. This portfolio has since been
discontinued as Oracle continues to place its focus on newer-gen Enterprise
Server offerings such as the SPARC, x86, Netra, and third-party Fujitsu SPARC
servers.

A blade server is a chassis designed to house multiple
thin, modular electronic circuit boards – or server blades – each a server in
its own right and dedicated to a single application. These blades function as
servers on a card, and contain processors, memory, integrated network
controllers, optional FC host bus adapters, and other I/O ports. A blade server
allows for more processing power in less rack space to streamline cabling and
reduce power consumption.

Oracle offered a tightly integrated
blade technology that can be deployed, managed, and supported as a single
system, from application to disk. Oracle’s Sun Blade series integrated x86 and SPARC-based
servers, storage, and advanced networking capabilities to support a mix of IT
workloads. These offerings were controlled by a single
system-management interface. The Sun Blade 6000 chassis architecture provided an
open, standards-based infrastructure for virtualization and consolidation, as
well as enterprise cloud-based deployments.

Sun Blade Servers offered features for:

• Transparent Management – Available as
  an option in addition to using existing management tools. This
  cross-platform tool provided direct management over individual server
  modules, and direct management of chassis-level modules.
• Open I/O – Uses PCI Express
  architecture and adapters, and included the capability for blade-independent
  expansion.
• SSD Enterprise Flash – Supported solid
  state drives as an option instead of hard disk drives.
• Remote Access – Integrated service for
  software.
• Cooling – Offered comparable airflow
  capacity to rackmount systems, for both SPARC and x86 modules.

Figure 1 looks at the former Sun Blade Server family.

Figure 1. The Sun Blade Server Family

Source:
Oracle

These products are detailed in Table 1.

Sun Blade Chassis Options

Oracle’s flexible, eco-efficient Sun Blade 6000
chassis integrated Oracle’s x86 and SPARC server blade modules with high-capacity
networking and storage blades to support a range of application environments.
Key features include:

• Ability to mix and match SPARC and Intel Xeon
  CPU architectures.
• Support for up to 10 server blade modules and
  9 storage modules.
• Blade-independent I/O expansion capability.
• Ability to consolidate power and cooling
  infrastructure for multiple systems into a single 10RU Sun Blade 6000 chassis.
• Support for hot-swappable power, cooling, and
  I/O infrastructure.
• Chassis bandwidth of up to 64Tbps.
• Integrated Lights Out Manager.

Sun Blade Networking Products

Sun Blade 60000, Sun Blade
6000 Virtualized, and Sun Netra 6000 Virtualized
40GbE Network Express Module. Fully virtualized network
aggregation product that provided scalable I/O throughput for multiple blade
servers. Some of its features included:

• Embedded network virtualization with zero
  management overhead.
• Streamlined data center infrastructure with
  10:1 cable reduction.
• Configuration flexibility for heterogeneous
  consolidation.
• Hot-swappable design to reduce application
  downtime.

Sun Blade 6000 and Sun Netra 6000 Ethernet
Switched NEM 24p 10GbE. Non-blocking switching to 10 blades to
help streamline infrastructure. Key features included:

• High-performance non-blocking uplinks with no
  over-subscription.

• 4:1 cable reduction to streamline management.

• High-density uplink support.

• Virtualization boost for I/O-hungry applications.

• Integrated Lights Out Manager via the Sun Blade 6000 Modular
  System.

Applications

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Oracle’s Sun Blade Server lineup was developed for virtualized business
applications, IT infrastructure and middleware, workload consolidation, and
single-instance and clustered databases. Table 4 looks at other potential
deployment uses for this suite.

Table 2 looks at Oracle Blade Server applications.

Environment

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Oracle’s Sun Blade Server portfolio offered
support for Solaris, as well as Oracle Linux, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, and Windows.

Support

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Although Oracle’s Sun Blade Server lineup is only supported on a

limited basis, the company does offer a general support ecosystem that
includes global support contacts, product documentation, patch updates and
security alerts, software security assistance, technical support policies,
lifetime support policy, support services, and, where necessary, equipment
replacements:

• Premier Support – Essential support
  services including 24×7 technical assistance, proactive support resources, and
  product updates. Oracle’s global coverage and 50,000+ development engineers
  and customer support specialists allow it to deliver complete, dependable,
  fully-integrated services. In addition, qualifying system customers can opt
  for Oracle Business Critical Service for systems, or receive Oracle Platinum
  Services at no additional cost.
• Business Critical Service – Priority
  response with agreed response times, system monitoring for early detection of
  faults, time to replace SLAs, on-site assistance, and preventative services.
• Platinum Services – Optimal support
  features with high priority response times for mission critical systems.
  Hardware coverage is 24×7, onsite within two hours.
• Advanced Customer Support –
  Mission-critical support services for complex IT environments. These services
  help maximize performance, achieve high availability, and reduce risk across
  the Oracle stack, from applications, middleware, and database to server and
  storage systems.

Pricing

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Oracle’s Sun Blade Server family of products were generally priced based on
their configuration parameters.

Competitors

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Top Oracle server competitors have included offerings from Dell EMC, Fujitsu,
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NEC, and Cisco, among others.

Web Links

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• Cisco Systems:
  http://www.cisco.com/
• Dell EMC: http://www.emc.com/
• Fujitsu: http://www.fujitsu.com/
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise:
  http://www.hpe.com/
• IBM: http://www.ibm.com/
• NEC: http://www.necam.com/
• Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/

About the Author

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Brady Hicks is an editor
with Faulkner Information Services. He writes about computer and networking
hardware, software, communications networks and equipment, and the Internet.

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