Sun Fire X4500 Explained

The Sun Fire X4500 data server (code named Thumper) integrates server and storage technologies. It was announced in July, 2006^[1] and is part of the Sun Fire server line from Sun Microsystems.

In July 2008, Sun announced the X4540 model (code-named Thor), which doubles the processing power of the X4500.

In November 2010, Oracle designated that the X4540 is end-of-life and has no next-generation replacement model.^[2]

Development

Thumper was developed by Palo Alto, California based company Kealia inc. Kealia was founded in 2001 by Stanford University professor David Cheriton and Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. When Sun bought Kealia in 2004, Thumper became the basis for the X4500 model.^[3]

Hardware

The Sun Fire X4500 supports two dual-core AMD Opteron processors and up to 64 GB RAM. With forty-eight 500/1000/2000 GB SATA drives, it provides up to 96 TB of raw storage in four rack units.

The Sun Fire X4540 supports two quad- or six-core AMD K10 (Barcelona) processors and up to 128 GB RAM. The new model also uses PCI Express IO technology, and added a compact flash disk slot for booting the operating system.

A significant feature of both systems is that the I/O framework was designed to handle high throughput on all disks simultaneously. These were the first systems designed specifically with ZFS in mind, so no hardware RAID is included.

Supported operating systems

• Solaris 10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
• Rocks Cluster Distribution^[4]
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard and Enterprise)^[5]
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008^[6]
• FreeNAS 9.3 - newer do not work

Products using X4500/X4540

• Sun Streaming System^[7]
• Sun Visualization System^[8]
• Sun Secure Data Retrieval Server (SDRS)^[9]
• Sun Constellation System^[10]
• Sun StorageTek Virtual Tape Library Value ("VTL Value") System^[11]
• Sun Scalable Storage Cluster^[12]
• Luminex Virtual Tape Solution for IBM zSeries mainframes via FICON^[13]
• SAS Intelligence Storage^[14]
• Greenplum's Sun Data Warehouse Appliance^[15]
• IPConfigure - Enterprise Surveillance Manager^[16]
• G10 Enterprise Video Manager^[17]
• Media Server for Symantec Veritas NetBackup^[18]
• Cypress Storage Appliance^[19]
• Internet Archive^[20]

Forty-two Sun Fire X4500 data servers are used to provide Lustre cluster filesystem storage in the TSUBAME supercomputer,^[21] which was number 7 in June 2006 TOP500 list.

TPC-H World Record

In October 2007, Sun submitted TPC-H result with an X4500 running Sybase IQ. At US $8.11/QphH, it achieved the best price/performance among the 1,000 GB results.^[22]

External links

• Sun Fire X4500 Server
• Sun Fire X4540 Server
• Sun Fire X4640 Server
• Sun Fire X4500 System Walkthrough and Part 2 (YouTube Video)
• Sun Fire x4500 demonstration - Andy Bechtolsheim demonstrating the 4500 hardware, Menlo Park Ca, 11 July 2006
• Configuring the Sun Fire X4500 Server as Network Attached Archival Storage for Symantec Enterprise Vault

Notes and References

1. Web site: Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: The Rise of the General Purpose System. 2007-10-31. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20080117204747/http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/the_rise_of_the_general. 2008-01-17.
2. Web site: End of Life Server Products. 2010-11-12. Oracle Corporation.
3. Web site: Bechtolsheim: The server is not the network . The Register . 14 September 2009.
4. Web site: on an X4500: ROCKS:searching for USB key on device ... and reboots. 2007-06-14.
5. Web site: Performance of a Sun X4500 under Windows, NTFS and SQLserver 2005. 2007-04-28. Jim Gray, Microsoft.
6. Web site: Installing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 on Sun x64 Servers. 2007-12-02. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20080209034832/http://www.sun.com/blueprints/1107/820-3781.html. 2008-02-09.
7. Web site: Sun Streaming System - Overview. 2007-04-28. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20070428050131/http://www.sun.com/servers/networking/streamingsystem/. 2007-04-28.
8. Web site: Sun Visualization System - Overview. 2007-04-28. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20070514105826/http://www.sun.com/servers/cr/visualization/index.xml . 2007-05-14.
9. Web site: Sun Microsystems Launches Unique Data Management Appliance for Communication Service Providers. 2007-06-07. Sun Microsystems.
10. Web site: Sun Constellation System. 2007-06-26. Sun Microsystems.
11. Web site: Sun StorageTek Virtual Tape Library Value. 2007-08-09. Sun Microsystems.
12. Web site: Sun Scalable Storage Cluster - Lustre on Thumper. 2007-08-01. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20070821105809/http://www.sun.com/servers/cr/scalablestorage/ . 2007-08-21.
13. Web site: Universal Storage Networking featuring FICON and ESCON mainframe channel gateways, connectivity and data storage products. 2007-04-28. Luminex.
14. Web site: The Simplicity of Achieving High-End Performance at a Low Cost. SAS Institute Inc..
15. Web site: Greenplum Data Warehouse Appliance . 2007-05-28 . Greenplum . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080812144942/http://www.greenplum.com/partners/data_warehouse_appliance/ . 12 August 2008 .
16. Web site: ipConfigure Home Page. 2008-08-28. IPConfigure.
17. Web site: EVM Highlights. 2009-11-14. Sun Microsystems.
18. Web site: Sun Fire X4500 as a Media Server for Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5. 2008-04-22. Sun Microsystems.
19. Web site: Cypress: SUN X4540 and ZFS+. 2008-09-15. Greenbytes .
20. Web site: The Internet In A Box. 2009-03-25. Sun Microsystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20091027041639/http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/2009-0325/feature/index.jsp. 2009-10-27.
21. Web site: Tokyo Tech Tsubame Grid Storage Implementation. 2007-06-21. Sun Microsystems.
22. Web site: TPC-H Details. 2007-11-07. Transaction Processing Performance Council.