Sun Microsystems SPARC T5220 - Manual (Page 3)

Executive Summary Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Executive Summary
Use of the Web is changing in fundamental ways, driven by Web 2.0 applications and
the thousands of people who join the global Internet every day through a proliferation
of new interactive devices. The character of applications and services is changing too.
Increasingly, user's don't need to install anything, upgrade anything, license anything,
subscribe to anything, or even buy anything in order to participate and transact. Web
users can even interact directly with content, changing it and improving it. Intellectual
property is shared, rather than locked away, and the most popular services are available
free of charge. Even very small transactions are now encouraged, becoming large in
aggregate. Social networking and other collaborative sites let like-minded people from
around the world share information on enormous range of topics and issues. Business
transactions too are now predominantly Web based.
Serving this dynamic and growing space is becoming very challenging for datacenter
operations. Services need to be able to start small and scale very rapidly, often doubling
capacity every three months even as they remain highly available. Infrastructure must
keep up with these enormous scalability demands, without generating additional
administrative burden. Unfortunately, most datacenters are already severely
constrained by both real estate and power — and energy costs are rising. There is also
a new appreciation for the role that the datacenter plays in reducing energy
consumption and pollution. Virtualization has emerged as an extremely important tool
as organizations seek to consolidate redundant infrastructure, simplify administration,
and leverage under-utilized systems. Security too has never been more important, with
increasing price of data loss and corruption. In addressing these challenges,
organizations can ill afford proprietary infrastructure that imposes arbitrary limitations.
Employing the UltraSPARC
®
T2 processor — the industry’s first massively threaded
system on a Chip (SoC) — Sun SPARC
®
Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers offer
breakthrough performance and energy efficiency to drive Web 2.0 infrastructure and
address other demanding datacenter challenges. Next-generation CoolThreads
™
chip
multithreading (CMT) technology supports up to 64 threads in as little as one rack unit
(RU) — providing increased computational density while staying within variously
constrained envelopes of power and cooling. Very high levels of integration help reduce
latency, lower costs, and improve security and reliability. Balanced system design
provides support for a wide range of application types — from Web services to high
performance computing (HPC). Uniformity of management interfaces and adoption of
standards helps reduce administrative costs. With both the processor and the Solaris
™
Operating System (Solaris OS) available under open source licensing, organizations are
free to innovate and join with a world-wide technical community.