Sun hopes to shine with blades

Blade server sales may be a small percentage of overall server revenue today, but the market for the compact, module systems is set to take off. So it’s not surprising to see Sun trying to jumpstart its blade business with a handful of blades launched last week.

Among the new blades include the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System. The system includes a compact blade chassis, which Sun executives claim will hold twice as much memory and twice as much I/O as competing offerings. The blades come nearly a year after Sun jumped back into the blade market after bailing out on blades in 2005.

It also marks the first Intel-based offering from Sun since it announced its partnership with Intel in January.

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Blade server sales may be a small percentage of overall server revenue today, but the market for the compact, module systems is set to take off. So it’s not surprising to see Sun trying to jumpstart its blade business with a handful of blades launched last week.

Among the new blades include the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System. The system includes a compact blade chassis, which Sun executives claim will hold twice as much memory and twice as much I/O as competing offerings. The blades come nearly a year after Sun jumped back into the blade market after bailing out on blades in 2005.

It also marks the first Intel-based offering from Sun since it announced its partnership with Intel in January.

Sun’s increasing focus on blades is a good move, since IDC expects blade servers to grow from about 10% of the market today to about 25% in 2005. I think Sun gains an even greater edge this time because, unlike last year, Sun is offering buyers a smorgasbord of blades. Last year, when it came to x86 blades, it was Opteron or nothing from Sun. With last week’s announcement, Sun now has an Opteron blade, a Niagara-based blade and an Intel blade.

That means buyers can deploy everything from dual- to eight-core systems and run Solaris, Windows or Linux, all in one system.

The Sun Blade 6000 Modular System includes the Sun Blade 10 RU Chassis, which holds 10 blade servers, fits four to a rack and starts at just under $5,000; the single-socket Sun Blade T6300, which starts at under $6,000 for a six-core configuration; the X6250, a two-socket quad-core Xeon-based server, which starts at under $3,700 for a single-socket configuration; and the Sun Blade X6220, a two-socket Opteron-based blade, which is priced starting at under $4,000.

Get all the details on Sun’s new blades here. And, I’m curious, are you interested in these? Let me know.

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