Safe, simple upgrades.
Making the move to the Solaris 10 OS and UltraSPARC IV processor-based servers is trouble-free and protects your technology investments.
There's never been a better opportunity to upgrade to the UltraSPARC IV processor-based systems running the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS), Sun's next-generation operating system. By upgrading, customers can make the most of Sun's latest technology, including Solaris Containers, chip multithreading, and groundbreaking diagnostics such as DTrace and Predictive Self-Healing.
Even better, Sun's relentless commitment to investment protection means that migration to new technologies is simple, safe, and cost-effective--nothing like the costly and disruptive forklift upgrades required by other vendors. The binary compatibility of the Solaris 10 OS with earlier versions ensures that existing applications continue to run unmodified, while the unique Uniboard design further protects customer investments.
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Join Sun experts Hal Stern, Brian Down, and Larry Wake for a Net Talk online seminar that addresses the business and technical aspects of upgrading to the Solaris 10 OS and the UltraSPARC IV processor-based systems. The Net Talk will be available beginning April 14.
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Investment Protection
Migrating to new server technology often implies major investments in time, money, and resources--investments that are often compounded by the need to upgrade the operating system and applications simultaneously. Because investment protection has always been a foundation principle for Sun, we can ease these concerns by providing the unique capability to incrementally upgrade hardware or software, or both, to meet your needs.
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Sun's family of UltraSPARC IV processor-based servers, including (clockwise from the tallest) the Sun Fire E20K server and the Sun Fire E25K server (which share the same chassis), the Sun Fire V890 server, the Sun Fire E4900 server, the Sun Fire E2900 server, the Sun Fire V490 server, and the Sun Fire E6900 server.
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Investment Protection White Papers
Read how Sun solutions deliver groundbreaking technology with investment protection.
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With the Solaris 10 OS, Sun guarantees binary compatibility with earlier versions of the operating system. Applications already in place will continue to run on the Solaris 10 OS unmodified. And with fault-isolated Dynamic System Domains, the Solaris 8 OS, the Solaris 9 OS, and the Solaris 10 OS can all run in the same box. This drastically simplifies the typically complex and expensive task of moving to a new environment and maximizes application availability.
For hardware, the innovative Uniboard design offered on the Sun Fire Enterprise servers lends additional investment protection. IT staff can simply add an UltraSPARC IV processor/memory Uniboard to an UltraSPARC III server, even while it is running. This industry-unique capability is even more compelling since all the CPUs will run at their rated speed. This allows enterprises to augment and expand their existing investments while gaining the performance benefits of the latest UltraSPARC processor technology.
Partnering with Sun means CIOs can make IT a competitive advantage for their businesses. The Solaris 10 OS and the UltraSPARC IV processor-based servers give IT managers the opportunity to maximize the efficiency of their assets and be far more agile than their competition. It's about protecting the entire application life cycle. It's about superior virtualization capabilities coupled with built-in security and availability features that provide the optimal environment for consolidation.
This kind of innovation, delivered with superior investment protection, also helps IT managers minimize risk in today's competitive marketplace. "It's all about the applications. Sun lets customers take advantage of new technology while maintaining a low-cost, low-risk infrastructure for their existing business services," says Kate Islas, Sun marketing manager for high-end servers.
Increasing Efficiency
"Increasing efficiency often boils down to squeezing the most you can out of a limited IT budget," says Islas. "Sun has several programs and technologies that make this possible."
The UltraSPARC IV processor, for instance, is the first generation of Sun processors to offer chip multithreading (CMT) technology. The UltraSPARC IV processor implements two pipelines on a single piece of silicon--dual-thread processing. Future SPARC technology will deliver ever increasing numbers of threads per processor to dramatically increase system throughput.
For multithreaded workloads, the UltraSPARC IV processor can provide more than twice the performance of the UltraSPARC III processor--in the same footprint and using the same operating system. The University of Nevada, for instance, saw a five-fold increase in query speed when it upgraded its data warehouse to the Sun Fire E2900 servers with the UltraSPARC IV processors.
Sun also offers industry-leading virtualization capabilities. The Solaris Containers software is Sun's latest innovation to enable IT consolidation. Layered on top of Dynamic System Domains technology, Solaris Containers provide near infinite levels of software partitioning to allow applications to run in isolated, highly secure environments with virtually no processing overhead.
The Solaris Containers are designed so that there is virtually no processing overhead. This is far superior to the competition, where partitioning comes with a heavy performance penalty. Need to reboot a Container? Do it in seconds without affecting applications running in other Containers or Domains.
Also, the Sun Upgrade Advantage Program delivers more purchasing power to customers, enabling them to solve problems associated with aging technology, demanding business pressures, and significantly reduced IT budgets. The program unleashes the hidden equity of a customer's existing IT infrastructure by offering exceptional, up-front trade-up allowances for Sun's and other vendor's products. In addition, Sun is the only systems vendor to eliminate the time and cost associated with environmentally safe asset disposal. We take care of it, free of charge.
Improving Agility
Migration to the Solaris 10 OS and the UltraSPARC IV processors boosts system agility as well. "Many customers might not associate the word 'agility' with servers or operating systems," says Islas, "but Sun's approach is to maximize the flexibility of all our technologies and services."
Technology such as the aforementioned Uniboards and Solaris Containers enable system agility by allowing administrators to quickly add or move compute resources to adapt to changing needs--without interrupting business services.
The capability to make these changes dynamically is particularly noteworthy. The technology lets administrators swap in new Uniboards and other components while systems are running, minimizing business disruption.
Managing Risk
Making the move to the Solaris 10 OS is a smart choice to continue driving risk out of the data center. Two groundbreaking technologies in the Solaris 10 OS play a key role: Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) and Predictive Self-Healing.
DTrace is a comprehensive real-time diagnostic engine that runs on production systems. It provides information to help pinpoint bottlenecks without degrading system performance. It's like having a mechanic in the passenger seat who spots a problem and fixes it while the car is speeding down the highway.
Predictive Self-Healing is a powerful tool that can identify and fix problems before administrators are even aware of them. And if a restart is necessary for maintenance purposes, the Solaris 10 OS boots 65 percent faster than the Solaris 9 OS.
Making Migration Easy
Sun's investment protection strategy also includes assisting customers with expense management, both from an architectural and a financial perspective. The result is a migration experience that is simple, safe, and cost-effective.
Sun's world-class service and support organization underpins Sun's technology innovations. Our Migration and Consolidation services make upgrading easy and safe while helping customers achieve operational efficiencies.
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