Oracle Unveils x86 Sun Servers With New Xeon Chips

Oracle has officially announced the Sun Server X4-2 and X4-2L, and the Sun Blade X4-2B, all running on the new 22-nanometer “Ivy Bridge” Xeon processors.

The new machines come in 21 models that address particular workloads. The systems are aimed at a range of applications, including database, middleware and enterprise business workloads in virtualised environments, the company said.

Enterprise Workhorse

In addition, the systems can be used in high-density, clustered computing environments, including enterprise clouds. Like other Oracle systems, the new Sun Server and Sun Blade servers are designed to work best with Oracle enterprise workloads.

“Oracle’s x86 servers are designed and optimized at each level of hardware and firmware to be the most reliable, highest performance systems for running Oracle software,” Ali Alasti, senior vice president of hardware development at Oracle, said in a statement.

Since buying Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion (£4.6bn) in 2010, Oracle officials have worked to build servers that are optimized for Oracle workloads, creating incentives for customers to buy the Oracle systems and applications together. Company officials touted the new systems’ ability to run Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM, which were engineered, tested, deployed and supported along with the servers.

Oracle’s high-end systems, such as ExaData for databases and ExaLogic for cloud computing, have garnered the most attention, but the company continues to work on more traditional x86 systems.

However, the vendor’s hardware efforts continue to be a mixed bag for the company. Sales of the engineered systems like ExaData continue to grow, but overall, hardware revenues in the most recent quarter fell 14 percent, to $669 million (£414m).

More Power

Oracle officials said the new systems offer 50 percent more compute power in the same power profiles as the previous generation of servers. Other Oracle technologies offered with the systems include Enterprise Manager 12c Ops Center, integrated Lights Out Manager for local and remote power management, and built-in server management tools. Power efficiency is enhanced by Oracle’s Advanced Cooling System.

Intel unveiled the new Xeon E5-2600 v2 processors at the Intel Developer Forum last month, with officials saying they can handle not only server workloads, but also storage and networking jobs.

Think you know all about Larry’s company? Try our quiz!

Originally published on eWeek.