eWEEK Labs reviews the latest blade system offered by Sun Microsystems Inc., the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform.IT managers looking for a well-managed, high-density server blade system to host Linux or Solaris applications should consider the latest blade system offered by Sun Microsystems Inc., the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform.
IT managers looking for a well-managed, high-density server blade system to host Linux or Solaris applications should consider the latest blade system offered by Sun Microsystems Inc., the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform.
In eWEEK Labs' tests, we were impressed by the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform's flexibility, the array of services available and the redundancy features the system offers. The platform is designed to be self-contained, making it practical for enterprises to deploy and manage their Web server, application server, database, load balancing service and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) acceleration service in the same box.
Sun boosts the flexibility of this blade system by offering SPARC and x86 server blades. Although Sun doesn't offer the fastest x86 or SPARC processors in the current Sun Fire blades, the high density of the B1600 system lets companies add more blades as needed. This can be less expensive than buying more servers with faster processors.
The Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform shipped in December. Its Intelligent Shelf blade chassis is priced at $4,795. The blades that can populate the chassis include B100s single-processor SPARC server blades and B100x single-processor x86 server blades, which start at $1,795 each with 1GB of memory and $2,795 with 2GB of memory. The B10n SSL proxy blade is priced at $9,375, and the load balancing B10p blade costs $13,800.
The $45,920 Sun Fire B1600 system that we tested included the blade chassis, three B100x server blades, six B100s server blades, a B10p proxy blade and a B10n load balancing blade.
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