Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 11th Jul 2006 17:12 UTC
Sun is coming out with the latest of its Opteron-based Galaxy servers, including its first system that will give the hardware maker a presence in the fastest growing and highly competitive blade space. At an event in San Francisco July 11, Sun officials will introduce not only the new Sun Blade 8000, but also another server that can scale to 16 processors and a system code-named Thumper that combines both server and storage capabilities in a single box. There's even a slideshow.
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Member since:
2005-10-09
You're not understanding what I said. I simply said this is an *evolutionary* product, *not* a *revolutionary* product. It's just an improvement on pre-existing ideas. They've taken what used to be a mainframe (massive storage, processing power, and memory), cut out the massive processing power/memory part (although it's probably more powerful than a mainframe from half a decade back....), and left the DAS there. They've also taken what used to be a departmental/workgroup server, and simply scaled up the storage, and added good network connectivity. It's just an evolution of products, scaled to fill another niche that needed filling.
I'm quite aware sun has done big machines. I used to work with an E20K at my old university. Yes, they had massive storage. At the same time, no - they were NOT small. Sure, the E450 came out before any of the supermicro stuff (which btw, was just a quick example off the top of my head, there are MANY chassis designers with chassises that can support a lot of disks. Not as many as the Sun system, but a lot nonetheless.) The E450 isn't the same thing as "Thumper" or a Supermicro box (or any of the other chassis designer's servers.) As you even stated, it wasn't 4u.
As to the last statement you made, two things
#1 - I was not suggesting it replace mainframes. I was simply saying what I again have repeated. Thumper is nothing more than a mainframe minus a lot of the processing power/ram (and if you want to get technical, throughput, redundancy, etc..) It's also nothing more than a scaled up in storage workgroup server. That isn't something to sneeze at, I intend to pick up a lot of these as demand arises in my company. It's an excellent solution to a lot of people's problems (including mine) that doesn't require me to build my own box. It is, however, still just an evolution on pre-existing products.
#2 - As to my understanding of mainframes:
http://corenode.com/~ormandj/images/screenshots/mainframe.png
Enjoy.
David - Happily writing COBOL at this very moment, on MVS. Do you even know what ISPF is?